ŠafárikPress University Press is the first Slovak university press to become a full member of the Association of European University Presses (AEUP), the European association of university and academic publishers. This membership builds on the press’ development to date and its commitment to high-quality, open, and internationally connected academic publishing. The AEUP currently brings together publishers from several European countries and promotes collaboration, knowledge sharing, and joint efforts to address current issues in scholarly publishing.
Membership in the AEUP strengthens the international connections publishing activities of UPJŠ and creates opportunities to exchange experiences and best practices with European university presses. It enables the university to monitor current developments and standards in academic publishing, participate in professional events and discussions, and establish contacts for further collaboration. Membership creates the conditions for further improving the services provided to authors.
For the university, membership represents another significant opportunity to increase the international visibility of its publications and to showcase ŠafárikPress within the European academic publishing community.
A major benefit of the membership is the opportunity to include ŠafárikPress’s publications in the joint AEUP Catalogue on the ScienceOpen platform. For ŠafárikPress it means an additional distribution and promotion channel; for authors it creates a new opportunity to increase the discoverability and international visibility of their publications in the academic community. Membership in the AEUP builds on the activities that ŠafárikPress has been systematically developing: electronic publishing, assigning DOIs, improving metadata quality, supporting open access, working with Creative Commons licenses, and developing services for authors and editorial staff. Part of this direction also includes managing the university’s own e-shop, Unibook, expanding options for making publications available electronically, and increasing their accessibility and visibility. Membership in the AEUP is therefore not an isolated activity but part of ŠafárikPress’s broader development toward becoming a professional university press that provides authors with support throughout the entire publication process while ensuring the accessibility and visibility of the resulting publications. Membership thus creates an opportunity to professionalize publishing activities, develop services for authors, and connect UPJŠ’s publishing output with the European academic community.
