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LSE Press passes landmark million book and journal downloads

Reaching one million usages also confirms our view that there is a worldwide demand for rigorous academic content presented in an accessible way
- Professor Dame Sarah Worthington, LSE Press Chair
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LSE Press has achieved a landmark one million downloads to date of books, monographs and journal articles.

As the School’s non-profit, open access publisher, LSE Press publishes high quality, peer reviewed social science research that has the potential to influence academic debate, public policy and the broader conversation.

Speaking to the LSE Alumni Network on the Press’s milestone 1,000,000 usages, LSE Press Chair, Professor Dame Sarah Worthington said: “This milestone is a remarkable achievement by the terrific team at LSE Press. It underscores the growing reach of LSE Press and helps highlight our mission of making high-quality social science research accessible to everyone through open access publishing. Reaching one million usages also confirms our view that there is a worldwide demand for rigorous academic content presented in an accessible way and reaffirms the commitment of LSE Press to broadening the reach of scholarly work.” 

In 2024, LSE Press publications reached readers in 182 territories. The most popular title was Advanced Macroeconomics: An Easy Guideed. Filipe Campante et al. with over 74,000 total usages at the final quarter.

The publisher is home to two book series - the Royal Geographical Society’s book series and LSE Monographs on Social Anthropology. Recurring publications also include the Journal of Illicit Economies and Development, the Journal of Long-Term Care, LSE Public Policy Review, Philosophy of Physics and Economía LACEA Journal.

Experts who have published with LSE Press include Terhi Rantanen, J. McKenzie Alexander, Patrick Dunleavy, and Mark Evans. Naila Kabeer’s book, Renegotiating Patriarchy, is shortlisted for the People’s Book Prize for Non-Fiction and has been described as “a masterpiece” by Duncan Green in From Poverty to Power and “a must-read” by Nusrat Jahan in The Daily Star Bangladesh. The open access collection, How Africa Trades, edited by David Luke, won the prestigious 2024 Business Council of Africa’s Business Book of the Year Award.

The leading publishing house has secured publicity in outlets including The Times Literary Supplement, Arise News, The Guardian, The Bookseller, African Business Magazine, Investment Week and across the LSE Blog networks. LSE Press is a member of the Open Book Collective, the Independent Publisher’s Guild, the Open Institutional Publishing Association and collaborated with COPIM for the LSE event, “Crisis in higher education and the future of Diamond open access”.

Professor J. McKenzie Alexander said: “I have been very impressed with LSE Press at every step of the process. Overall, my experience with LSE Press has transformed my expectations for how a publishing house should be run.”

Behind the article

LSE Press metrics are gathered using open-source OPERAS metrics and Plausible Analytics.

LSE Press engages with conversation through public lecture events and participation in the annual LSE Festival. In October 2024, LSE Press hosted a symposium on the future of social sciences publishing as part of Open Access Week. The event sought to share knowledge of social sciences publishing processes with early career researchers and authors, as well as spotlighting open access innovations and enabling networking, the event featured panel discussions with authors and publishing professionals and a keynote speech from Philippe Sands KC, Professor of Law at UCL.

Find out more about LSE Press here: https://press.lse.ac.uk/site/.