Lorraine steals the limelight …

… while Steve tries to steal the historic Phaistos Disc.

As summer changes once again into autumn here in the UK and (for most people) thoughts begin to turn to snuggling up in front of a blazing fire with a hot drink, our thoughts turn to our next issue of Insights. What better to read in front of that blazing fire!

We have had a busy summer here at Insights, with a few changes to the editorial team, so we begin this issue with some introductions. We welcome Shania Khan and Andrew Barker to the team, but also welcome Andrew in his role as the new UKSG Publications Officer. He has contributed a fascinating article on the institution as e-book publisher. Our very own Co-Editor, Lorraine Estelle, has been in the news following a change in her ‘day job’, taking up the position of Director of COUNTER, so we seized the opportunity to speak to her about her new role.

But, it is not all about us, of course. We have also been out and about to bring you a range of stimulating articles and interviews for this issue. In our regular Profile feature, we speak to Kathleen Fitzpatrick and find out a little more about her role as director of scholarly communication at the Modern Language Association (MLA). We also spend a day with the library director at the University of Zululand, Laila Vahed.

Next, we bring you a series of articles focusing on the scholarly publishing environment from a range of perspectives. Frances Pinter and Michael Magoulias consider the challenges facing small academic presses, while Simon Hubbard’s paper updates his thoughtful presentation from last year’s UKSG One-Day Conference viewing publishing from the perspective of a poacher-turned-gamekeeper. Marilyn Deegan and Samantha Rayner complete our trio of articles by taking a look at the academic book of the future. Taking a more global perspective, Andrew Joseph analyses the difficulties being faced by scholarly publishers in South Africa as they try to break into the global market, and Celeste Feather continues the international theme in her article exploring the role and development of the International Coalition of Library Consortia (ICOLC).

It wouldn’t be an issue of Insights without some coverage of open access, so we are pleased to offer you articles by Alice Keller on library support for OA journal publishing, by Mafalda Picarra and her colleagues, who have researched the breadth of European OA policies and how they can be aligned with the Horizon2020 policy, and, finally, from Paul Ayris and Lara Speicher presenting UCL Press, ‘the UK’s first fully open access university press’.

Rounding off this issue, we have a thought-provoking article from Paul Harwood on the future of the subscription agent and Torsten Reimer’s overview of how Imperial College London have been implementing the ORCID researcher identifier.

And if that doesn’t stimulate your brain and keep you warm on a cold autumn evening, nothing will!

Don’t forget this year’s One-Day Conference and Forum take place in London on 17 and 18 November respectively. This year, the Conference takes as its theme ‘E-books for today and tomorrow: what is the role of the “long form” in teaching, learning and research?’

As always, we welcome submissions of scholarly articles for publication in Insights, so send your ideas and proposals to Lorraine or me.