Open research aims to offer significant benefits for researchers, authors, institutions, funders, governments and society as a whole by providing greater access to research, data and methodologies.

The responsibility as a university press to lead on shaping and implementing changes of open research aligns to the views of Managing Director for Academic, Mandy Hill in her latest piece for The Bookseller.

Mandy comments that “for many years I felt publishers should facilitate, but not lead, that transition. But I have come to believe that university presses should go further and take a leading role to ensure real and appropriate change is delivered because the goals of open research support the mission of our universities.”

Unlocking the potential of Open

Our mission is to unlock people’s potential with the best learning and research solutions. We believe it is essential that we use the unique position that we have to engage as honest advisors and partners, investing in innovative solutions and providing a strong voice for the needs of the academic community.

Adding to this theme Mandy states that “the added responsibility for university presses is to challenge both the academic universities and the publishing communities as we have a foot in both camps and are uniquely placed to think and act outside of our comfort zones and historic positions… we can and should be looking to partner with academia to find new solutions that fit today’s needs”

We are committed to investing in open solutions, products, and services such as our Core Share tool, early-research platform Cambridge Open Engage and Open Access journals and books to support these needs.

Working with the Open Community

As a university press we have a responsibility to help make open research work for our partners and the wider the academic community, whether that is helping our societies develop sustainable economic models, institutions provide authors with open services, or supporting researchers and authors directly as they publish, share and collaborate around their work. We recognise that different communities will need different support.

This reflects Mandy’s view that “when thinking about achieving widespread Open Access we must start with the needs of the community we serve – our respective shareholder universities and the academy at large…as publishers, particularly ones with breadth and depth in humanities and social sciences, we know that there isn’t a one-size-fits all approach”.

We are committed to a sustainable, more open, future for academic publishing.

We hope you’ll join us.

Visit our webpages for more information on open research and publishing Open Access or contact openresearch@cambridge.org.