The Association of University Presses (AUPresses) mission statement recognizes that “AUPresses advances the essential role of a global community of publishers whose mission is to ensure academic excellence and cultivate knowledge.” The 31 translations of this statement—ranging from American Sign Language and Arabic to Thai and Welsh—displayed in rotation throughout our web site evoke this far-reaching community.
AUPresses expressed our engagement with the global scholarly ecosystem over the past year by:
- Providing complimentary registrations to the virtual 2023 Annual Meeting for 10 Ukranian publishers as part of the Supporting Ukrainian Publishing Resilience and Recovery (SUPRR) initiative to create closer ties between the Ukrainian publishers and the global publishing community.
- Welcoming Open Press at the University of Sussex in the UK as an introductory member. Sussex is our first member to join through a partnership with Jisc, the UK digital, data, and technology agency focused on tertiary education and research.
- Engaging more staff from member presses located outside the US as committee members: This year, 33 publishing professionals from Canada, the UK, Europe, and South Africa served on AUPresses committees, comprising 1/5 of all committee members. This not only represents a significant increase from 20 individuals at the beginning of the decade but also matches the current proportion of member presses outside the US in relation to our total membership. The Journals Committee deserves special acknowledgment: 6 of its 9 members hail from outside of the US.
- Promoting the Association of Canadian University Presses’ ReadThinkKnow project in our UPWeek 2023 Speak UP Gallery.
- Organizing cooperative exhibit space for our member presses to attend international book fairs in Mexico City (FILUNI, August/September 2023) and London (March 2024) as well as scholarly conferences, the Charleston Library Conference in South Carolina (November 2023) and the UKSG Annual Conference in Glasgow (April 2024).
- Serving on the international steering committee for Peer Review Week.
- Executive Director Peter Berkery speaking at FILUNI in Mexico City and participating in the Researcher to Reader conference in London (February 2024)
- Cosponsoring the fifth biennial UP Redux, organized by the Association of Learned and Professional Scholarly Publishers (ALPSP) and Edinburgh University Press in May 2024.