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Annual Report 2025: Open Access Publishing
29th May, 2026 in Latest news
This Open Access Annual Report highlights the continued commitment of Leuven University Press to advancing inclusive, sustainable, and mission-driven Open Access publishing.
1. Inclusive Publishing: for Authors
Mission-based and not-for-profit University Press Publishing:
True to its mission as a not-for-profit academic publisher, Leuven University Press fully embraces Open Access. Being able to share scientific insights with readers worldwide and giving them access to new knowledge, unhindered by financial thresholds, constitutes the pinnacle of scientific publishing. Leuven University Press has a fast growing Open Access book collection across all disciplines but with an emphasis on the Humanities, the Social Sciences, and the Arts.
The scheme and information below presents an overview of publishing Open Access with Leuven University Press:
Our frontlist in numbers:
In 2025 Leuven UP published 47 new frontlist titles of which:
- 20 titles in immediate Open Access, Gold and Diamond OA (through various OA-funding schemes)
- 7 titles in delayed Open Access (through participation in the JSTOR Path to Open programme)
- 20 titles in closed access (conventional publications)
The entire list of 2025 Open Access frontlist titles can be consulted here:
The steady growth of OA-titles in our frontlist:
The number of OA-titles in the frontlist has increased with +10% compared to 2024.
The increase in OA-titles is steady and continues into 2026 when a growth of +50% OA-frontlist titles is expected.
Various paths to an Open Access monograph or edited volume:
Leuven UP offers various paths to an OA-book publication and is committed to searching the most suitable path for every author interested in publishing his/her work in Open Access.
Apart from personal grants and research project funding earmarked for OA-publications, Leuven UP offers its authors access to various alternative resources, such as: the KU Leuven Fund for Fair Open Access (https://lup.be/open-access/ku-leuven-fund-for-fair-open-access/), the Open Book Collective (https://openbookcollective.org/), Knowledge Unlatched, and JSTOR Path2Open.
How our Authors Benefit From Leuven UP’s Participation in the Open Book Collective:
1# Leuven UP provides structural support for every author who publishes his/her book in OA by covering all publishing costs related to making the book available as a fully inclusive ePUB compliant to the accessibility standards WCAG 2.2 Level AA standard. In doing so, Leuven UP guarantees that all OA frontlist content is accessible to readers with visual and reading disabilities, and compliant with the accessibility standards: European Accessibility Act 2025 and American Disabilities Act Title II 2026.
2# Leuven UP aims at democratising access to Open Access funding by reserving OA-funds for those authors who have limited or no access to resources at all, such as early career scholars and scholars from the Global South.
2. Inclusive Publishing: for Readers
All Leuven UP front list titles are fully compliant with the following accessibility standards:
- European Accessibility Act (dd. June 2025)
- American Disabilities Act Title II (dd. April 2026)
Leuven University Press is strongly committed to inclusive publishing and enabling access to digital content to all users. Digital accessibility is a shared responsibility of all parties involved in the publishing sector. Leuven University Press aims to integrate and maintain this awareness in every step of its workflow.
Website
We continuously try to ensure that our website is accessible to as many people as possible, and is compliant with accessibility standards and best practices.
Frontlist Titles
We are committed to ensuring that all our ebooks are accessible to as many readers as possible and aim at embedding accessibility in our digital content. Since 2024, our frontlist titles are simultaneously published in two digital formats (ePDF and ePUB) alongside our print editions.
As recommended by the DAISY Consortium, Leuven University Press uses ePUB as the format for accessible ebooks, and checks the accessibility features of its ebooks using the DAISY Consortium’s Ace Accessibility Checker. The ePUB format is responsive and inclusive, and we produce our ePUBS in accordance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 Level AA standard.
Backlist Titles
Our backlist titles – all titles published before 2024 – are not yet meeting the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 Level AA standard. Nevertheless, Leuven University Press is doing reasonable efforts to meet reader requests on a case-by-case basis.
Making our e-content digitally accessible is a work in progress. We welcome your feedback on the accessibility of our ebooks. We will try to follow up on all requests we receive. However, in some exceptional cases, the cost of making a book accessible may be disproportionately high or not possible given the nature of the book.
Ebook platforms and metadata
Our ebooks are available in ePUB and/or ePDF format, and are distributed by various ebook suppliers and vendors. The accessibility metadata of our ebooks are included in our ONIX feeds, and are sent to all suppliers and vendors in the ebook chain we are working with. We trust that the recipients of our metadata treat our accessibility data correctly and in accordance with the sector’s best practices.
Our Open Access ebooks are made available in ePDF and/or ePUB format via multiple channels, such as: OAPEN Library, JSTOR, Project MUSE. Accessibility policies and features can be found on their respective websites.
3. Future Plans and Strategic Vision for 2026-2031
Leuven UP wants to continue and further expand its OA-publishing programme in academic book publishing, keeping the programme as inclusive as possible with special attention to those authors who experience difficulties in finding OA-funding and covering publishing costs. Gold and Diamond Open Access are at the core of Leuven UP’s vision for the future.
Our Values:
Leuven University Press reflects the core values of its parent institution, KU Leuven, and will continue to do so in the coming years. The Press stands for academic quality, equity, diversity, inclusiveness, and accessibility:
Safeguarding Bibliodiversity in a Market-driven World:
Mission-driven publishers, such as university presses, play a crucial role in enriching the publishing landscape by fostering bibliodiversity, amplifying the voices of those who have been traditionally marginalised. University presses are versatile, disruptive, and often early adopters: embracing interdisciplinarity and emerging fields of research, welcoming adventurous and innovative perspectives, testing new publishing models and implementing new technologies to better serve the scholarly community.
Verified Content in a hyper-vocal World:
Bibliodiversity goes hand in hand with verified content. University Presses are gatekeepers, quality control is their second nature. All content is checked and verified by experts at various stages in the process. Rigorous peer review is standard practice, both for closed and for open access publications. Therefore, all academic titles published by Leuven University Press carry the GPRC-label in their colophon, which stands for Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content.
Commitment to Open Access:
Leuven University Press is an early adopter of Open Access as an academic publishing model, supporting authors in making their work freely available. Open Access embodies the ideal of scholarly publishing as it removes barriers to verified content. Leuven University Press offers various Open Access models, including both born open access and delayed open access.
High-quality Metadata:
Open science depends on high-quality metadata. Leuven University Press ensures the digital interconnectivity of research by assigning DOIs to all ebooks (ePDF) via CrossRef and linking works to authors’ ORCID iDs. Metadata is submitted to leading bibliographic databases and Altmetric data.
Inclusiveness:
Leuven University Press follows the Best Practice Guidelines from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and adopted the EU accessibility directive already starting in 2024. Titles are made accessible using technologies that support text-to-speech and adjustable layouts with alt-text, available in print, ePDF, and ePUB formats. This way, Leuven University Press contributes to a more inclusive environment and ensures participation in scholarly discourse for individuals with reading disabilities.
Accessibility:
Open science is about making knowledge accessible to all of society. Through the Press’ partnership with The Wikipedia Library, the entire collection of paywalled e-books is made available to Wikipedia editors, thus facilitating global access to reliable academic content and contributing to the democratisation of knowledge.