UCL Press announces 20 millionth open access download
Posted on 16th June, 2025
UCL Press announced that it had reached its 20 millionth open access download at a special event to celebrate the 10th anniversary of its first publications.
UCL Press’s pioneering publishing programme spans many of the major academic disciplines, from history to philosophy and the sciences to anthropology. The Press has published more than 400 books that have been downloaded more than 11.7 million times, whilst its 15 journals have attracted more than 8.8 million downloads.
Its publications – which feature monographs, edited collections, academic journals and textbooks – have reached readers in 242 countries and territories worldwide, providing access to vital academic research to readers in the Global South and beyond. More than 280 of its books have been downloaded in more than 100 countries and territories; 7 of these have been accessed in more than 200 countries/territories worldwide.
The 20 millionth download was Structural Injustice and the Law, edited by Professor Virginia Mantouvalou (Professor of Human Rights and Labour Law, UCL) and Professor Jonathan Wolff (Alfred Landecker Professor of Values and Public Policy, Blavatnik School of Government, Oxford University).
The most downloaded open access book in the UCL Press list continues to be How the World Changed Social Media by UCL Professor of Anthropology Daniel Miller and a collective of eight other global anthropologists. The first book in the hugely popular 11-book Why We Post series, it has been downloaded nearly 945,000 times since it was published by UCL Press in early 2016, and has been translated into a variety of languages, including Hindi, Tamil, Portuguese and Italian.
The most downloaded journal is London Review of Education, an open access journal publishing rigorous, theoretically based research into contemporary global education, which has seen nearly 2million downloads of its articles since it transferred to UCL Press in 2020. Also notable is the flagship interdisciplinary journal UCL Open Environment, which utilises an open peer review model. The journal has amassed nearly 435,000 downloads of its published articles, and more than 435,000 of its preprints.
More recently, UCL Press has also established an open access textbooks programme to provide free, high-quality digital textbooks for students, which have been adopted by university courses across the world, including UK, Panama, Canada, Sweden, USA, Germany and South Korea.
Marking the occasion, Dr Paul Ayris, Pro-Vice-Provost (Library, Culture, Collections & Open Science) and Chief Executive of UCL Press, said:
‘In an environment where scholarly books typically sell around 200 copies worldwide over their lifetime, open access publishing clearly demonstrates significantly higher global demand for scholarly publications when they are made freely available online, ensuring that high-quality research outputs reach their full potential audience and that important research is made available to policy makers and to those for whom content can otherwise be unaffordable or inaccessible. This delivers UCL’s clear mission to act for the long-term benefit of humanity, as outlined in its 2034 strategy.’
If you are interested in publishing your book, journal or journal article with UCL Press, please visit ‘Publish with Us’ on: www.uclpress.co.uk