UBIQUITY PRESS LIMITED

Their core work

Ubiquity Press is a London-based open access academic publisher that specialises in making scholarly outputs — journals, books, and research monographs — freely available and technically interoperable across research infrastructures. Their H2020 participation shows they operate at the intersection of publishing and digital research infrastructure: they help make scholarly content machine-readable, metadata-rich, and integrated into European open science systems. Rather than simply printing and distributing academic work, they build the technical and policy conditions under which research outputs become useful inputs for further discovery — including text and data mining. As an SME in this space, they occupy a practical, implementation-oriented role that larger publishers rarely fill.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Their two projects trace a clear arc: FutureTDM (2015-2017) was a coordination and support action focused on removing legal and technical barriers that prevent researchers from mining published content — a largely policy and awareness-raising effort. HIRMEOS (2017-2019) was a research action that moved into active technical infrastructure, embedding monographs into the European Open Science stack with real integration work. The shift is from enabling access in principle to building the plumbing that makes access work in practice. There is no data beyond 2019, so it is not possible to confirm whether this infrastructure-building trajectory continued.

Ubiquity Press appears to be moving from policy advocacy toward technical infrastructure roles — a direction that would make them a useful partner for EOSC-related projects or any initiative needing a publisher with hands-on open science integration experience.

How they like to work

Ubiquity Press has only ever appeared as a participant, never as coordinator, across both H2020 projects — suggesting they join consortia as a specialist contributor rather than driving them. Despite only two projects, they engaged with 18 distinct partners across 8 countries, which is a wide network for a small publisher and points to genuine integration into the European open science community. They appear to work well in cross-disciplinary, infrastructure-focused consortia where their publishing expertise is a distinct and needed component rather than the central capability.

Ubiquity Press has collaborated with 18 partners across 8 countries within just two projects, indicating strong connectivity relative to their project volume. Their network spans European research infrastructures and open science communities rather than any single national cluster.

What sets them apart

Ubiquity Press occupies a rare position: a small, technically capable open access publisher with direct experience in EU research infrastructure projects. Most publishers in H2020 consortia are large commercial houses; Ubiquity Press brings the same publishing domain knowledge at SME speed and flexibility. For a consortium needing a partner who understands both scholarly content production and open infrastructure requirements — metadata standards, TDM licensing, monograph discoverability — they offer a combination that is genuinely uncommon at their size.

Highlights from their portfolio

• HIRMEOS
  The largest of their two projects by funding (EUR 230,686) and a RIA — meaning real research and development work — directly targeting the integration of scholarly monographs into the European Open Science Cloud, which is a high-priority and technically demanding infrastructure challenge.
• FutureTDM
  Their entry point into H2020, this coordination action positioned Ubiquity Press within the EU policy conversation on text and data mining rights — an area that has since become central to the EU's data strategy and AI Act discussions.