Learn about new models in academic publishing that could better serve academia by helping scholars get their work into the public sphere more readily, removing financial barriers for authors and readers and underpinning better research practices.

We speak to two academics about the challenges associated with the dominant commercial academic publishing model and how they are seeking more effective ways to enable researchers to disseminate knowledge.

Paul Ayris is pro-vice provost for library services at University College London and chief executive of UCL Press which he founded 10 years ago as the UK’s first fully open access university press. The press produces a range of open access monographs and edited collections, student textbooks and academics journals and is now home to UCL Open Environment, the only multidisciplinary open science journal focused on all environment related topics.

Philipp Koellinger is a professor in social science genetics at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and co-founder and CEO of a tech start-up DeSci Labs which hosts DeSci Publish, a pre-print network where scientific research is published, validated, and curated without paywalls or publication charges.