UCL Press is a university press wholly owned by University College London (UCL).
UCL is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom (UK). It is the third largest university in the UK by total enrolment, and the largest by postgraduate enrolment.
UCL has many distinguished alumni, including Mahatma Gandhi, leader of the Indian independence movement, as well as the authors Robert Browning, G. K. Chesterton, Stella Gibbons, and Rabindranath Tagore. All of these authors are represented in the Thammasat University Library collection. Among other UCL graduates are the engineering scientist Alexander Graham Bell, who invented the telephone, and Sir Francis Crick, who co-discovered of the structure of DNA. There are books about both of these creative scientists in the TU Library collection. Among entertainers and musicians who attended UCL were the comedian and actor Ricky Gervais and the composer Gustav Holst, both of whose works are represented in the TU Library collection in the Rewat Buddhinan Media Center on the U2 level of the Pridi Banomyong Library, Tha Prachan campus.
UCL Press was the first fully open access university press in the UK, and publishes monographs, textbooks and other academic books in a wide range of academic areas which are available to download for free, in addition to a number of journals. As of May 2018, UCL Press had had more than 1 million downloads of its open access books.
As its website explains,
Established as the UK’s first fully open access university press in 2015, UCL Press has fast become one of the leading open access scholarly publishers in the UK, publishing both traditional peer-reviewed scholarly works and innovative research outputs. We currently publish 40 open access books a year in addition to 8 academic journals, and support UCL’s successful student journals programme. Based at UCL, one of the world’s leading research universities, our primary outputs are scholarly monographs and edited collections, but we also publish textbooks, journals and other innovative research outputs. Our books have been accessed more than 1.89 million times by readers across the world. UCL Press makes all its books and journals available in open access form to download freely in PDF form or read online anywhere in the world. They can be downloaded freely from UCL Press’s website or from the many other platforms where they are distributed. UCL believes in the principles of open access as the best way to solve the world’s global challenges. Find out more about open access here.
In addition to being available on its own dedicated website, UCL Press publications are accessible to TU students at JSTOR and other databases available at the TU Library. As the JSTOR website notes, the mission of UCL Press
is to make its published outputs available to a global audience, irrespective of their ability to pay.
To give an example of the wide-ranging subject matter available, which should be of some interest to TU students in many different faculties, here are some recent titles published by UCL Press, all of which may be downloaded for free:
- Anthropology of Landscape: The Extraordinary in the Ordinary OPEN ACCESS 2017
- Archaeologists in Print OPEN ACCESS 2018
- Arcticness: Power and Voice from the North OPEN ACCESS 2017
- Being Modern: The Cultural Impact of Science in the Early Twentieth Century OPEN ACCESS 2018
- Being Young, Male and Muslim in Luton OPEN ACCESS 2019
- Biostratigraphic and Geological Significance of Planktonic Foraminifera OPEN ACCESS 2015
- Bloomsbury Scientists: Science and Art in the Wake of Darwin OPEN ACCESS 2017
- Botticelli Past and Present OPEN ACCESS 2019
- Brexit and Beyond: Rethinking the Futures of Europe OPEN ACCESS 2018
- Britain, France and the Decolonization of Africa: Future Imperfect? OPEN ACCESS 2017
- Burning Bright: Essays in Honour of David Bindman OPEN ACCESS 2015
- Canada in the Frame: Copyright, Collections and the Image of Canada, 1895-1924 OPEN ACCESS 2018
- Cities Made of Boundaries: Mapping Social Life in Urban Form OPEN ACCESS 2018
- Citizen Science: Innovation in Open Science, Society and Policy OPEN ACCESS 2018
- Connected Curriculum for Higher Education OPEN ACCESS 2017
- Conservation of Natural and Cultural Heritage in Kenya: A Cross-Disciplinary Approach OPEN ACCESS 2016
- Consumer Data Research OPEN ACCESS 2018
- Conversation about Healthy Eating OPEN ACCESS 2017
- Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, Volume 1: 1752 to 1776 OPEN ACCESS 2017
- Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, Volume 2: 1777 to 1780 OPEN ACCESS 2017
- Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, Volume 3: January 1781 to October 1788 OPEN ACCESS 2017
- Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, Volume 4: October 1788 to December 1793 OPEN ACCESS 2017
- Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham Volume 5: January 1794 to December 1797 OPEN ACCESS 2017
- Danish Reactions to German Occupation: History and Historiography OPEN ACCESS 2017
- Developing the Higher Education Curriculum: Research-Based Education in Practice OPEN ACCESS 2017
- Discord and Consensus in the Low Countries, 1700-2000 OPEN ACCESS 2016
- Drawing Futures: Speculations in Contemporary Drawing for Art and Architecture OPEN ACCESS 2016
- East India Company at Home, 1757-1857 OPEN ACCESS 2018
- Education System in Mexico OPEN ACCESS 2018
- Ethics and Aesthetics of Translation: Exploring the Works of Atxaga, Kundera and Semprún OPEN ACCESS 2018
- Evolution and Geological Significance of Larger Benthic Foraminifera OPEN ACCESS 2018
- Fabricate 2011: Making Digital Architecture OPEN ACCESS 2017
- Fabricate 2014: Negotiating Design & Making OPEN ACCESS 2017
- Fabricate 2017 OPEN ACCESS 2017
- Feminism and the Politics of Childhood: Friends or Foes? OPEN ACCESS 2018
- First Hebrew Shakespeare Translations: A Bilingual Edition and Commentary OPEN ACCESS 2017
- Fonthill Recovered: A Cultural History OPEN ACCESS 2018
- Four Histories about Early Dutch Football, 1910-1920 OPEN ACCESS 2016
- From Conflict to Inclusion in Housing: Interaction of Communities, Residents and Activists OPEN ACCESS 2017
- From Revolt to Riches: Culture and History of the Low Countries, 1500–1700 OPEN ACCESS 2017
- Fundamentals of Galaxy Dynamics, Formation and Evolution OPEN ACCESS 2019
- Global Encyclopaedia of Informality, Volume 1: Towards Understanding of Social and Cultural Complexity OPEN ACCESS 2018
- Global Encyclopaedia of Informality, Volume 2: Understanding Social and Cultural Complexity OPEN ACCESS 2018
- Herman Gorter: Poems of 1890 A Selection OPEN ACCESS 2015
- Histories of Technology, the Environment and Modern Britain OPEN ACCESS 2018
- How and Why to Read and Create Children’s Digital Books: A Guide for Primary Practitioners OPEN ACCESS 2018
- How the World Changed Social Media OPEN ACCESS 2016
- The Impact of Migration on Poland: EU Mobility and Social Change OPEN ACCESS 2018
- Integrating Food into Urban Planning OPEN ACCESS 2018
- Karl Popper, Science and Enlightenment OPEN ACCESS 2017
- Key Concepts in Public Archaeology OPEN ACCESS 2017
- Knowledge Sovereignty Among African Cattle Herders OPEN ACCESS 2018
- Landscape in the Longue Durée: A History and Theory of Pebbles in a Pebbled Heathland Landscape OPEN ACCESS 2017
- Leading Cities: A Global Review of City Leadership OPEN ACCESS 2019
- Mapping Society: The Spatial Dimensions of Social Cartography OPEN ACCESS 2018
- Mίdias sociais no Brasil emergente OPEN ACCESS 2018
- Memorandoms by James Martin: An Astonishing Escape from Early New South Wales OPEN ACCESS 2017
- Museum Object Lessons for the Digital Age OPEN ACCESS 2018
- Musical Cities: Listening to Urban Design and Planning OPEN ACCESS 2017
- Nanofibres in Drug Delivery OPEN ACCESS 2018
- Narratives of Low Countries History and Culture: Reframing the Past OPEN ACCESS 2016
- Participatory Planning for Climate Compatible Development in Maputo, Mozambique OPEN ACCESS 2015
- Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology: Characters and Collections OPEN ACCESS 2015
- Poems of Guido Gezelle: A Bilingual Anthology OPEN ACCESS 2016
- Politics and Poetics of Authenticity: A Cultural Genealogy of Sinhala Nationalism OPEN ACCESS 2018
- Posthumanism and the Graphic Novel in Latin America OPEN ACCESS 2017
- Reading Today OPEN ACCESS 2018
- Reflexive Translation Studies: Translation as Critical Reflection OPEN ACCESS 2019
- Regulating Content on Social Media: Copyright, Terms of Service and Technological Features OPEN ACCESS 2018
- Remains of the Soviet Past in Estonia: An Anthropology of Forgetting, Repair and Urban Traces OPEN ACCESS 2018
- Re-Mapping Centre and Periphery: Asymmetrical Encounters in European and Global Contexts OPEN ACCESS 2019
- The Research University in Today’s Society OPEN ACCESS 2017
- Revolutionizing a World: From Small States to Universalism in the Pre-Islamic Near East OPEN ACCESS 2018
- Scattered Finds: Archaeology, Egyptology and Museums OPEN ACCESS 2019
- Self-Build Homes: Social Discourse, Experiences and Directions OPEN ACCESS 2017
- Shaping Higher Education with Students: Ways to Connect Research and Teaching OPEN ACCESS 2018
- Social Media in an English Village OPEN ACCESS 2016
- Social Media in Emergent Brazil: How the Internet Affects Social Mobility OPEN ACCESS 2017
- Social Media in Industrial China OPEN ACCESS 2016
- Social Media in Northern Chile OPEN ACCESS 2016
- Social Media in Rural China OPEN ACCESS 2016
- Social Media in South India OPEN ACCESS 2017
- Social Media in Southeast Italy: Crafting Ideals OPEN ACCESS 2016
- Social Media in Southeast Turkey OPEN ACCESS 2016
- Social Media in Trinidad: Values and Visibility OPEN ACCESS 2017
- Social Theory after the Internet: Media, Technology, and Globalization OPEN ACCESS 2018
- Spectral Arctic: A History of Dreams and Ghosts in Polar Exploration OPEN ACCESS 2018
- Sri Lanka at the Crossroads of History OPEN ACCESS 2017
- Suburban Urbanities: Suburbs and the Life of the High Street OPEN ACCESS 2015
- Sustainable Food Systems: The Role of the City OPEN ACCESS 2016
- Temptation in the Archives: Essays in Golden Age Dutch Culture OPEN ACCESS 2015
- Textbook of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery OPEN ACCESS 2016
- Things that Travelled: Mediterranean Glass in the First Millennium AD OPEN ACCESS 2018
- Treasures from UCL OPEN ACCESS 2015
- Venice Variations: Tracing the Architectural Imagination OPEN ACCESS 2018
- Visualising Facebook: A Comparative Perspective OPEN ACCESS 2017
- Water Societies and Technologies from the Past and Present OPEN ACCESS 2018
- The Web as History: Using Web Archives to Understand the Past and the Present OPEN ACCESS 2017
- Why Icebergs Float: Exploring Science in Everyday Life OPEN ACCESS 2016
A case study of UCL Press was published, analysing its status as the UK’s first fully open access university press, as part of the global movement towards open access and open science, developments in which UCL is acknowledged as a European leader. The article’s conclusion is as follows:
UCL Press first came into existence as a commercial publisher in 1991, reaching its zenith as a publisher in around 1996. After that, activity diminished and publishing effectively came to an end. UCL Press was relaunched in June 2015 as ‘the first fully OA university press in the UK’. It forms a substantial contribution to the UCL 20344 strategy to deliver UCL as an accessible and publicly engaged5 organization. It also feeds the wider global move towards open science. UCL has a reputation as a disruptive innovator, and the relaunch of UCL Press carries on that noble tradition into the 21st century.
(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)