Event Reflection: UKSG 2026

By Cath Dishman (Liverpool John Moores University) & Rebecca Wojturska (Edinburgh Diamond, University of Edinburgh)

UKSG Conference is the conference for the organisation UKSG which started life as the United Kingdom Serials Group conference and was very much focused on purchasing and E-Resources. Now more than a third of the membership is based outside the UK and the conference covers a much wider range of topics including scholarly communications and research support. The conference is attended by delegates from across the global knowledge community, including librarians, publishers, intermediaries, technology vendors, consultants and more. As well as presentations and workshops there is an exhibition area with various vendor stalls you can visit, with an array of freebies and information on offer.

UKSG returned to Glasgow for 2026 and four members of OIPA were very pleased to have been accepted to present a breakout session together. Rebecca Wojturska (University of Edinburgh), Cath Dishman (Liverpool John Moores University), Tom Morley (University of Lancaster) and Sarah Humphreys (Bodleian Libraries) presented “Library-led hosting and publishing: how it started and how it’s going”. We talked about our various open journals services and publishing partnerships, from the oldest – Edinburgh Diamond – to the youngest – Bodleian’s SHOx hosting service. We each spoke on four topics: Set up and continuity, non-traditional outputs, challenges and conclusions, where we each offered some final thoughts. The session seemed to go down well on both days (you have to present a breakout twice at UKSG) and we got plenty of questions. We even inspired some folks to think about setting up their own service.

Rebecca Wojturska and Cath Dishman, two of the OIPA Committee members, share their reflections of the conference: Rebecca from the OIPA stand and Cath as an attendee.

Rebecca: Perspective from the OIPA stand

UKSG 2025 (Brighton) saw the first year OIPA had a stand in the exhibition hall. This was a hit, and we had a constant stream of delegates coming to our stand to ask questions about us as an organisation as well as about the activities of our members. Fun fact: the breakout session mentioned above that four OIPA members gave together came about from discussions at the OIPA stand at UKSG 2025! We were therefore proud to return to UKSG 2026 in Glasgow to once again represent ourselves and our members. While the exhibition hall seemed quieter this year (or perhaps the room was just bigger!), we still had an influx of interest. We advocated for open institutional publishers, connected our members with each other, gained interest from potential new members, had people sign up to our newsletter, shared our member’s publications with delegates, and had a good old blether. There is still so much to do for open access and equitable models of publishing, but UKSG helps connect us to foster ideas and action plans. We very much hope to be back for UKSG in 2027, especially as it’s in Glasgow again!

Cath: Perspective from a delegate

I was able to attend many of the sessions which are a mixture of breakouts, lightning talks and plenaries. The talks I attended ranged from discussions about transformative agreements, Open Educational Resources, the future of scholarly communications to networking as an imposter.  The two plenaries I found particularly interesting were on Day 1  “A fox in the henhouse? University presses, corporate takeovers and implications for the future of scholarly brooks”  and Day 2 “Beyond the Big Deal: Lessons from the Big 5 Negotiations and retaining sector voice and strength at a time of radical uncertainty”  

The first session brought together Kira Hopkins (COPIM Open Book Futures/Birbeck University), Tom Grady (COPIM Open Book Futures/Birbeck University), Linda McGrath (Amsterdam University Press/Central European University Press) and Theo Andrew (University of Edinburgh). This session talked about the financial challenges in Higher Education within which university libraries and scholarly publishers are dealing with. It talked about different types of publishing and what openness looks like for them and how governance and finance has an impact on how presses/services are run.

The second session was with Chris Banks (Chris A Banks Consulting), Alastair Flett (University of Cambridge), Kirsty Lingstadt (University of York), Gary Steele (Glasgow Caledonian University) and Anna Vernon (JISC). This session talked about the importance of working together when negotiating agreements. There was a big focus on transparency both in terms of what we are paying for but also what are publishers doing in the research integrity space. There were lots of questions from the audience including some around AI being added to products and whether we should push back on this as it seems to then cost more money without necessarily adding value. There were also questions around how libraries and JISC could work to support alternative models to the more traditional publishing routes. This is important but then there is another piece of work to do to convince researchers to move from their traditional outlets.

The two lightning talks on the second day were also inspiring. Beth Montague-Hellen (The Francis Crick Institute) “Building a community for scholarly communications research from the front lines” and Simon Bowie (University of Edinburgh) “Small changes: taking back control of our universities through open software”. Both of these topics are so important and I was looking forward to what they had to say. Beth was up first asking the question as a knowledge-led profession do we do research and if we do the research do we share it? In most cases no we don’t. This doesn’t mean there isn’t an appetite for research and Beth encouraged us that anyone can do research. Beth is trying to set up a community of individuals who want to get involved in research in order to provide support to each other, so folks can work together beyond their own institutions to dip their toe in research. Simon talked about small ways in which we can move away from “traditional” software options and use more open source. Simon gave us lots of alternatives to the things we are used to using and I was attempting to write them all down but being a lightning talk it was a lot to take in. Thankfully Simon has shared the text from the presentation so I can go back and look at the alternative option and see where I can make those small changes.

My favourite break out was on Day 3 with my Open Research Week colleague Hannah Crago (University of Essex) and her co-presenters Rob Johnson (Research Consulting) and Becky Hill (Taylor & Francis). This was “Networking for imposters: Making connections without the fear”. In this session Rob talked about how networking isn’t something that comes naturally to most people but has so many benefits. Becky and Hannah shared their experiences of networking but good and bad. Hannah shared that we feel the pressure to have something important to say, particularly in a work/conference setting but actually we should just treat people like people. Becky suggested that a way to deal with imposter syndrome is to get comfortable with the uncomfortable rather than trying to “fix” it. She suggested we should see networking as a longer term relationship rather than a one off opportunity to self-promote. We were given the opportunity in the session to network with our neighbours and share some of our experiences. Unfortunately the session was then interrupted by an alarm and we had to evacuate. It was a shame we didn’t get to hear the conclusions from the team.

UKSG also offers lots of opportunities to network with colleagues and suppliers both in the conference hall and at the social events. It is an exhausting but worthwhile experience and I am hoping I will be able to attend again next year.