Small and Medium Size Academic Publishers Matter!

Abstract

• Beyond the large publishing groups, with huge catalogs of international books and journals published in English and with extensive presence in academic institutions around the world, the small and medium size academic publishing houses exist. These publishers are concerned with building catalogs that cover global issues but also local ones. They are publishing in the different languages of each country, trying to reach the closest readers with their contents and addressing topics that international profile publishers do not deal with. Thus helping to solve nearby problems and, therefore, making science connect with society. With small teams, very tight budgets and traditional models of publishing, they find few opportunities to face the digital transformation and the path towards open access. This group of publishers, which exists in each country, is quite unknown and very little recognized. However, it is necessary to look at them: small and medium sized publishers are guarantors of diversity in research and multilingualism in scientific communication.