Twenty-five years and counting for PUP Europe

The press has celebrated its 25th anniversary in various ways through the year, culminating with a party at the  Oxford office back in September for current and former staff, as well as other friends of the press, following a meeting of its European Advisory Board. Williams describes the meeting as an “eye-opening” opportunity to “understand how much our advisory board—who are largely scholars—feel beleaguered about the pressures of being an intellectual and trying to get what is important and truthful out into the world”. She continues: “There’s not the same value placed on that there might once have been.”

Despite this, Williams feels the sector is “flourishing”. She explains: “It has been a difficult couple of years, but there are more university presses in the UK, and certainly more in Europe, than there were 20 years ago. I think that speaks to the importance of the work that we do—peer-reviewed, properly researched, fact-checked scholarship.” Meanwhile, senior editor for social sciences Rebecca Brennan declares this a “very exciting” period for university presses, who have become “more outward facing, both in terms of collaboration with other university presses, but also looking to reach broader readerships”.

This is certainly a priority for Brennan, who joined the company two years ago. She is looking to publish work that “takes academic knowledge and translates it for as broad a readership as possible” and particularly seeking books that “focus on injustice and inequality in all of its various forms”. PUP plans to grow both the number of titles originating in Europe (currently around 50 of the global annual output of 275) and the author base here, and Brennan is “committed to bringing people in who are not historically well represented within publishing”.  She says: “I’m very open to a broad range of projects.”

Another priority for the team is getting out to meet people face-to-face after the lack of travel during the pandemic led to a dip in publishing output. Though PUP operates a flexible working policy allowing employees to choose where they work, Williams believes it is “more important than ever that we’re connecting in person”. She expands: “It feels to me like the story we need to tell about university press work is that’s it’s all about human relationships.”

This is interesting, given the industry’s focus on Artificial Intelligence (AI). Williams sits on PUP’s AI working group. The press is not currently licensing to Large Language Models or other platforms. “But,” she admits, “we know we need to look at that, and we’re actively figuring out our position. It’s a case where proceeding cautiously is right for us... We’ve come to the conclusion, as many people have, that there’s a difference between AI tools and AI content generation. There’s space for the industry to evolve, and to use those tools in a known and safe way. But we do have a policy on the website about AI, which is very clear that you can’t use it to generate writing, because we don’t have the infrastructure to verify that.”

 She considers AI both “a fundamental challenge to so many of the things that we do” and “an opportunity in the same breath”, joking: “Publishing always thinks of itself as in crisis. There’s never a time when we don’t feel under pressure.” Nonetheless, she remains positive, telling me: “One thing about working in university press publishing and at PUP is that we are full of curious people. That’s a trait that I would say extends across all of our colleagues, particularly in Europe. It really is a space for lifelong learners to do their best work, and that’s what I love about it the most.”