UN@ éditions: Rethinking Prestige in Open Access Scholarly Publishing
1. About the press
UN@ éditions is a diamond open access publishing platform founded in 2019 through a collaboration between three universities in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region of France (Université Bordeaux Montaigne, Université de Limoges, and Université de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour). It operates through a network of partner university presses and offers a shared editorial model for publishing enriched digital scholarly books.
With a small team, UN@ has published nearly 100 titles in the humanities and social sciences and supports around fifteen new projects each year. Its governance is based on a close collaboration between partner presses, which are responsible for scholarly selection, and the platform, which handles editorial production, XML structuring, and dissemination.
2. Why publish open access books?
UN@ was created in response to a simple observation: traditional scholarly publishing models do not allow for broad, immediate, and equitable dissemination of research outputs. In a context of increasing requirements from funders (ANR, ERC, Horizon Europe), it became necessary to develop a credible, non-commercial alternative aligned with the principles of open science.
The diamond model—free for both authors and readers—was therefore an obvious choice. It repositions scholarly publishing as a public service while ensuring editorial independence.
3. Ensuring high-quality scholarly publishing
Contrary to a still widespread assumption, open access does not entail any compromise in quality. At UN@, quality relies on a rigorous and clearly distributed editorial workflow:
- scholarly selection and peer review carried out by partner university presses (editorial boards, external reviewers);
- in-depth editorial preparation (copyediting, normalization, structuring);
- XML-TEI encoding to ensure interoperability and long-term preservation;
- content enrichment (links, multimedia, associated data);
- dissemination with DOIs, comprehensive metadata, and international indexing.
This often-invisible work lies at the heart of the model: a digital book is not simply a PDF, but a structured, accessible, and durable scholarly object.
4. Academic prestige: a shifting paradigm
The question of prestige is both central and paradoxical. “Born-open” presses such as UN@ still face a relative lack of symbolic recognition compared to long-established publishers, often associated with closed economic models.
Yet our authors—more than 1,300 to date—choose UN@ for different forms of recognition:
- immediate international dissemination;
- genuine accessibility of their work;
- the ability to reach broader audiences (including beyond academia).
In this context, prestige is being redefined: less as an inherited label than as the actual capacity to circulate knowledge.
5. What makes a publication successful?
At UN@, success is not measured in sales or institutional prestige, but in real impact:
- international visibility (with readership across more than 200 countries);
- downloads and effective use;
- circulation within academic and non-academic networks;
- the ability to contribute to scholarly and societal debates.
For example, a recent publication devoted to a highly specialized corpus—the Bullaire de l’évêché d’Agen, compiled in the early sixteenth century from thirteenth- and fourteenth-century records—has reached far beyond its initial geographical and thematic scope (nearly 4,000 views). Focused on tithe transfers in medieval Agen, this scholarly work, based on the edition and analysis of historical sources, would traditionally have been intended for a narrow circle of specialists.
However, its open access publication revealed an unexpected international circulation, with readers in more than 45 countries. In some cases, this engagement takes a very concrete form: a reader based in China systematically downloaded the different units of the corpus, demonstrating a sustained and in-depth use of material that is nonetheless highly localized.
This example illustrates how open access can generate unanticipated readerships and uses, transforming the actual reach of research deeply rooted in a local context.
More broadly, some publications reach unexpected audiences, particularly in educational or community settings, which for us constitutes a strong indicator of success.
6. Author feedback
Authors consistently highlight three aspects:
- the quality of editorial support;
- the efficiency and smoothness of the publication process;
- the increased visibility of their work.
Many also express a form of ethical satisfaction: publishing without access barriers gives greater meaning to their research.
Furthermore, the ongoing dialogue between authors and academic editors, along with the possibility of integrating enriched content, can lead to substantial rewritings of manuscripts. These enrichments, fully embedded in the research process and evaluated by editorial boards in the same way as the text itself, open up new forms of scholarly writing—inseparable from the new forms of reading they enable.
The international reach of publications is one of the most striking effects of the model. Works initially conceived within a francophone framework now find readers far beyond their linguistic context, sometimes in unexpected geographical areas. For both partner presses and authors, this expanded circulation is often a discovery in itself, contributing to a renewed understanding of what constitutes impact in scholarly publishing today.
7. The main challenge
The main challenge is not editorial, but structural: gaining recognition that diamond open access publishing is an infrastructure requiring stable human, technical, and financial resources.
With a very small team, UN@ currently operates under tight constraints. The increasing number of projects contrasts with the fragility of available resources, limiting development capacity despite growing demand.
8. What next?
The issue today is no longer to demonstrate the relevance of the model, but to ensure its consolidation. Born-open presses and platforms such as UN@ are no longer experimental: they are already fully operational actors in scholarly communication.
Institutions and research policies are now expected to support precisely this capacity for innovation, openness, and public service.
Stéphanie Vincent
Editor, Head of the UN@ Platform
Université Bordeaux Montaigne, France
in collaboration with Ausonius éditions, Presses universitaires de Bordeaux,
Presses universitaires de Limoges, and Presses universitaires de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour
una-editions.fr
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