Success for CAMRI Scholars as UWP reaches 1 million views and downloads

Over 1 million views and downloads have now been achieved by the University of Westminster Press since publishing its first journal issue in September 2015. (Figures end April 2021). Many of the 1,089,280 views are for books and journals published and edited by scholars from CAMRI, including the top three books (1) Critical Theory and Authoritarian Populism (ed. J. Morelock) 68,260 views/downloads (2) The Propaganda Model Today (ed. J. Pedro-Carañana et al.) 63,353 (3) Critical Theory of Communication (C. Fuchs) 37,350, each of which forms part of the Critical, Digital and Social Media Studies series over seen by Christian Fuchs. The top performing journal, Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture (290,505 since 15/9/2015) is also run by an editorial board comprised of CAMRI Scholars, Anthony McNicholas, Anastasia Denisova, Doug Specht, and CAMRI alumna Dinara Tokbaeva. UWP also published the highly successful Media and Communications Study Skills Student Guide by Doug Specht, which alongside the book spawned a study skills YouTube Channel that has reached 69,687 views since June 2020.

UWP was established by a University steering group in 2014, hired its first part-time employee in February 2015 and published its journal issue in September 2015 and first book in October 2016. Its website went fully live on 12 May 2015. UWP has worked with platform providers Ubiquity Press and more recently for journals since 5 January 2021 Michigan Publishing/Janeway. It has functioned as a mixed model diamond open access publisher supported by income from book sales, central university and departmental contributions, one-off external university and grant-holder donations and library membership collective funding notably Knowledge Unlatched’s ‘Select’ programmes for individual titles. Many of its publications are in the area of media and communications but it has published book titles in history, philosophy, geography, education and politics. Its activities are overseen by a single UWP Editorial Board and it works within Research and Scholarly Communications, of the Research and Knowledge Exchange Office, Student and Academic Services, University of Westminster.

UWP is considered to be a ‘New University Press‘, digital-first with open access as a key principle. Its logo is a ‘W’ consisting of an open laptop and an open book.

Photo by Tom Hermans on Unsplash