Event: OIPA Symposium 2026

Overview

Thursday, June 18  •  10 AM – 5 PM •  Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts, Falmer, University of Sussex, England

Symposium Registration and Fees

The Symposium is free to attend. Registration for in-person attendance closes on 12 June 2026. Online registration will remain open until midday on 17 June 2026.

With thanks to the University of Sussex Library for their support.

Programme

Programme Summary

10:00-10:20 – Coffee and registration
10:20-10:30 – Introduction to OIPA 2026 Symposium
10:30-11:45 – Panel 1: HE in crisis: why open institutional publishing is more important than ever
11:45-12:30 – Lightning talks session 1
12:30-13:30 – Lunch
13:30-14:30 – Workshop: OIPA challenges and opportunities
14:30-15:15 – Lightning talks session 2
15:15-15:45 – Break
15:45-16:45 – Panel 2: Advocacy for university-based publishing
16:45-17:00 – Closing remarks

Full Programme

10:00-10:20 – Coffee and registration 

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10:20-10:30 – Introduction to OIPA 2026 Symposium

Paula Kennedy (Chair of OIPA; University of London Press)

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10:30-11:45 – Panel 1: HE in crisis: why open Institutional publishing is more  important than ever  

This panel opens the OIPA Symposium by focusing on the value of open institutional publishing, OIPA and its members in the current HE financial crisis in the UK. Panelists will explore the ways in which open institutional publishing can help tackle different challenges – social, financial and political – and address why non-profit open access publishing in universities is increasingly essential, not a ‘nice to have’. Our panel features a range of perspectives, from an OIPA member and publisher/ platform provider, a librarian, a funder and an early-career researcher.  

Chair: Prof Sarah Kember (Professor of New Technologies of Communication at Goldsmiths, University of London & Director of Goldsmiths Press)

Panellists: 

• Prof Caroline Edwards (Executive Director, Open Library of Humanities & Open Journals Collective)
• Jane Harvell (University Librarian and Director of Library, Culture and Heritage at the University of Sussex)
• Ross Mounce (Director of Open Access Programmes, Arcadia)
• Dr Anna-Maria Sichani (Research Associate in Digital Humanities, School of Advanced Study, University of London)

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11:45-12:30 – Lightning talks session 1

Speakers:

• ‘The Making of OLH’s Generative AI Policy’ by Dr Simon Everett (Managing Editor, Open Library of Humanities)
• ‘Expanding the SUP Publishing Offer’ by Paul Clarke (Commissioning Editor, Scottish Universities Press [SUP]) and Sally McIntosh (SUP Management Board)
• ‘small changes: open source software for publishing’ by Simon Bowie (Digital Library Software Developer, Edinburgh Diamond  

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12:30-13:30 – Lunch 

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13:30-14:30 – Workshop: OIPA challenges and opportunities

Led by Dr Philippa Grand (Co-Vice Chair of OIPA; LSE Press) and Rebecca Wojturska (Co-Vice Chair of OIPA; Edinburgh Diamond) 

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14:30-15:15 – Lightning talks session 2

Speakers:

• ‘Reviewing the University of Warwick Press: Adventures in Space, Time & Possibility’ by Dr Gaz Johnson (Press Manager, University of Warwick Press)
• ‘Open Access, Open Call – A Case Study in Building a New List’ by John Atkinson (Press Manager, University of Westminster Press)
• ‘Innovation and Impact through the Collective Development of Dynamic Scholarship’ Dr Allison Levy (Director, Brown University Digital Publications)

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15:15-15:45 – Break 

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15:45-16:45 – Panel 2: Advocacy for university-based publishing 

This closing panel features a range of speakers who will share case studies and advice from other open access networks, advocacy campaigns in different contexts and tips for OIPA and its members on building a brand and advocating for the value of open institutional publishing.  

Chair: Andrew Barker (PVC for Student Experience, Lancaster University and Chair of the OIPA Advisory Board)

Panellists:

• Jane Buggle (Head Librarian, Institute of Art, Design + Technology)
• Charles Watkinson (University of Michigan Press & University- Based Publishing Futures)
• Nicky Borowiec (Brand and Design Consultant)

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16:45-17:00 – Closing remarks

Paula Kennedy (Chair of OIPA; University of London Press)

Meet our Speakers

John’s career in academic/educational publishing extends across the spectrum from one of the biggest firms – first job, Simon & Schuster Academic – to the smallest – his own, Auteur, no. of employees: 1 – which was acquired by Liverpool University Press, and him with it, in 2020. He has been his own Commissioning Editor, Sales & Marketing Manager, Production Manager and (reluctant) Finance Director, all of which stand him in good stead for his current role as Manager of pioneering Open Access publisher, University of Westminster Press. He sits on the OIPA Committee as Advisory Board Secretary. 

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Until May 2026 Andrew Barker was Library Director at Lancaster University, prior to that, he held a number of senior roles within a wide range of UK University libraries.  

At Lancaster, Andrew worked to ensure that the library at Lancaster plays a significant role within the open scholarship ecosystem, working with colleagues to develop a range of open research initiatives, working in partnership with academics, publishers, the N8 and other university consortia.  

Throughout his career in Higher Education libraries, Andrew worked visibly and actively across the sector. He was chair of UKSG between 2018 and 2022 and co-chair of SCONUL between 2022 and 2025 and is currently chair of the OIPA  Advisory Board. 

Andrew is now Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Student Experience and Colleges at Lancaster University, a post he has held since May 2026. 

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Nicky is a brand consultant and graphic designer with over 20 years of experience in publishing. In-house, she led creative teams at Palgrave Macmillan and Springer Nature, where she oversaw the rebrand of Nature Publishing Group. Her clients have included LSE Press, University of London Press, BMJ Group and the Open Library of Humanities. 

Nicky is passionate about helping publishers – and the wider knowledge community – bring their brands to life, from defining their values to developing their visual identity. She creates cohesive, purposeful brand toolkits that help organizations tell their stories with clarity and impact. 

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Simon Bowie is an open source software developer focused on community-owned and scholar-led open publishing infrastructures. Working for the University of Edinburgh, he supports and develops open publishing infrastructure as part of Edinburgh Diamond and for other partner institutions in Scurl’s Open Community Hosting. His academic work focuses on open source software and open access publishing, posthumanism, the expression of irony and sincerity, and radical librarianship. 

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Jane Buggle is the Head Librarian at the Institute of Art, Design + Technology in Dublin. She is the Convenor of the IFLA Library Publishing Section and co-founder and Manager of the IOAP (Irish Open Access Publishers) Community of Practice. Jane is on the Advisory Board of the Open Institutional Publishers Association (OIPA), and on the Advisory Boards of the Health Sciences Libraries Journal and the DBS Applied Research and Theory Journal. She is the Managing Editor of the IADT Journal of Research + Creativity (IJRC). She is currently Co-Lead on WP2 of the NORF-funded Diamond Ireland project. 

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Paul is the Editorial Manager for Scottish Universities Press, and has been with SUP since 2024. He started his career in academic publishing with Manchester University Press and held a variety of roles including Editorial Co-ordinator and Commissioning Editor for Literature, Theatre and Film. He has also worked as a freelance commissioning editor for Palgrave Macmillan, and is a Director of the Modernist Society.

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Caroline Edwards is Professor of Contemporary Literature and Culture at Birkbeck, University of London. She has authored and edited five academic books – most recently Utopia and the Contemporary British Novel (Cambridge University Press, 2019) and The Cambridge Companion to British Utopian Literature and Culture Since 1945(Cambridge University Press, 2026). Caroline is known for her work in journals publishing and leads a team at Birkbeck who run the Open Library of Humanities and its Janeway platform. In 2025 Caroline launched the Open Journals Collective, an international research infrastructure supporting hundreds of diamond open access journals in AHSS and STEM disciplines.

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Dr Simon Everett is Managing Editor of the Open Library of Humanities and has been with the OLH since 2021. As editorial policy lead, he has overseen the consultation and drafting processes for the OLH’s Generative Artificial Intelligence Policy, which was released earlier in 2026 after more than a year of development. 

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Jane Harvell is currently the University Librarian and Director of Library, Culture and Heritage at the University of Sussex. She has previously worked in the Library at the London School of Economics and at the British Library in various management and curatorial roles including the National Sound Archive. 
 
At the University she is a member of our University Leadership Team, the Education and Students Leadership Team and the Leadership Group of the Sussex School for Progressive Futures. She has a strategic role in advocating for open research practice and delivering learning spaces across the University. She is also currently Chair of Research Libraries UK (RLUK) and a Trustee of the Mass Observation Archive Trust whose collections are held at Sussex. 

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Dr Gaz J Johnson is currently the University of Warwick’s Press Manager. Within this role he is distilling a couple of decades of experience in open-publishing in delivering on a year-long strategic review project of their university press. Prior to this for many years he was at Warwick’s Institute of Advanced Study leading an international editorial team as Managing Editor-in-Chief of the Exchanges interdisciplinary, early career focused research journal.  He retains professional interests within the cultural tensions and power-dynamics extant across the scholarly communications landscape, and in his ‘spare’ time he is also the Director of a property management company. 

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Sarah Kember is Professor of New Technologies of Communication at Goldsmiths, and Director of Goldsmiths Press, the UK’s first green open access university press monograph publisher (launched in 2016). Her research includes feminist studies of media, science and technology. Kember is a critical advocate and experimenter with open access, publishing critiques such as ‘Why Write? Feminism, Publishing and the Politics of Communication’ and ‘Why Publish?’ alongside ambiguous works of fact/fiction such as Astrobiology and the Search for Life on Mars (part of the Living Books about Life series) and Media, Mars and Metamorphosis. 

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Allison Levy is Director of Brown University Digital Publications, a Library-based program launched with generous support from the Mellon Foundation. Under her leadership, BUDP develops pathbreaking, award-winning multimodal monographs, and shares its expertise widely through inclusive training programs. Allison serves on the Association of University Presses’ Library Relations Committee. She holds a PhD in history of art and has authored numerous books on early modern Italy. She is currently writing a multimodal book on multimodal books.

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Sally has been Lead Librarian at University of the West of Scotland since 2020, with over 25 years’ experience in education, academic and research libraries, including the University of Edinburgh and the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh. She was one of the original members of the SUP Management Board involved in developing the press and has designed policies, procedures and associated support around Open Access Publishing, Research Data Management and Copyright and Licensing across UWS supporting academics to adopt open research practices. Sally is also chair of the SUP training and development group, a member of the newly formed SCURL training and development working group, and vice chair of the Scottish Higher Education Digital Library, maintaining collaborative acquisition frameworks and networks across Scottish HE. 

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Ross is Director of Open Access at Arcadia – a family philanthropy founded in 2002. He was previously a postdoc in the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Cambridge, a Software Sustainability Fellow, and a Panton Fellow for open data in science. He is proud to be a member of the OIPA advisory board. 

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Dr Anna-Maria Sichani is a BRAID Research Fellow and a Research Associate in Digital Humanities at the Digital Humanities Research Hub, School of Advanced Study, University of London. Her research focuses on responsible data-driven research, AI and emerging technologies in the Humanities and Cultural Heritage sectors, digital infrastructures, and digital pedagogy. Her recent books include Exploring Digital Cultural Heritage: Access, Use, Value and Sustainability, with Eirini Goudarouli and Jane Winters (2026) and Reframing Failure in Digital Scholarship (2025) (co-edited with Michael Donnay), both published by University of London Press. 

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Charles Watkinson is an Associate University Librarian at the University of Michigan and Director of the University of Michigan Press. Responsible for the institutional repository, copyright office, and various other scholarly communication services, he encourages and supports open practices at a large public US research university. As director of a mid-size university press, producing around 100 books a year, he is involved in open access publishing – 75% of the U-M Press scholarly books are published OA immediately. Charles also serves on the Boards of the OAPEN Foundation / Directory of Open Access Books and the Open Journal Collective.