Review of 2024 by publisher Barbara Budrich.
In a nutshell
The year 2024 was interesting in the Chinese sense, and yet, an overall a nice year for the 20th anniversary of Verlag Barbara Budrich.
2024 in more detail
The year 2024 was an eventful and beautiful anniversary year for Verlag Barbara Budrich. We posted about those past 20 years and were happy to receive terrific feedback from many of our partners – from authors to colleagues to friends from other fields.
Publications
In 2024, we were able to publish a total of 174 great books and 55 new journal issues. The cooperation with our authors and editors was the continuous highlight for us of this year – or let’s say, of the last 20 years!
Living Handbook
In summer, as part of a project funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, we launched “Politik und Geschlecht” (Politics and Gender) as a printed volume and as a “Living Handbook” open access. A new format that is attracting a lot of interest from our community.
Audiobook read by AI
At the end of the year, our first audiobook read by an AI, “Gefühlte Wahrheiten” (Felt Truths) by Ortwin Renn, was also published (in German). AI has kept us – and you, too, probably – busy throughout the year. And I am sure that a recording read by a human is of higher quality. For economic reasons however, we usually don’t decide between reading by an AI or a human, but between an audiobook or no audiobook. Thus, AI voices might be an opportunity for us to read some of our publications out to you.
Sustainability
At the end of 2024, we presented our first sustainability report with figures from 2023. This ESG report (Environment, Social, Governance) will also become mandatory for smaller companies from January 2026. We have therefore started now, and based on the German Sustainability Code (DNK), prepared this report (in German). In this context, I would particularly like to highlight our commitment to open access and social aspects which both play a prominent part in our report. The English version will follow in due course.
Open Access
One of our goals is to “increase the share of open access in our publications as an instrument for the wide dissemination of verified knowledge and for reducing the volume of print production”. A goal with a twofold positive outcome.
In our experience, a title whose eBook is available open access free of charge is hardly in demand as a printed book anymore. This automatically reduces print production which in turn protects resources and reduces carbon emission. At the same time, open access titles are ubiquitously available. Since we also follow the regular procedure for quality assurance, editing, production, marketing and distribution for open access titles, our high-quality titles are made known and made available via all channels.
Social
In the social sector, we primarily pursue the goal of fair cooperation at eye level. For us, this includes, for example, trust-based working hours and the flexible choice of place of work for our employees, but also the offer to participate in our own pension fund as a company pension scheme, which is by no means a matter of course for a company of our size.
By the way, this approach to fair cooperation at eye level does extend to all our operations with all our partners – authors, customers, freelancers, suppliers, etc.
Events
Post-pandemically (remember?), 2024 was a “normalized” year again. Although it contained traces of the pandemic: While conferences and travel have returned to pre-pandemic proportions, a return of all our team members from their respective home offices is not likely, and not even possible: There are no longer enough workplaces available for everyone to work at headquarters at the same time.
The conferences, from the congress of the German Society of Educational Science in Halle (Saale), to the congress of the German Society for Social Work in Jena, both in Germany, the meetings of European educational science (ECPR), European (ECPR) and international political science (IPSA), to the congress of the German Political Science Association in Göttingen, Germany, the Frankfurt Book Fair and many other conferences and meetings were wonderful. And I don’t know about you, for me it was hardly special from March onwards to travel in packed trains again without a mask.
In addition, in my role as a member of the Committee for Publishers of the German Publishers and Booksellers Association, I was allowed to attend meetings in Frankfurt several times and, as a German member of the Federation of European Publishers, to whose board I was elected in November, to general assemblies in Vilnius, Lithuania, and Brussels, Belgium.
Team
Our team has seen some changes: Our four trainees have all taken up permanent positions with us over the course of the year. Johannes Lohaus in sales, Paula Schmieding, Sarafina Yamoah and Katarina Willems as in-house editors. And to our great regret, Maria Dasbach, who has digitized our accounting almost into the 21st century over the past seven years, left at the end of the year. After internal restructuring, Brinja Lotz has now taken over this job: I am very grateful to her for that!
Many interns supported us in 2024. Larissa Brozio, Chiara Prinz, Alyssa Bock, Julia Liebald, Alina Wiedermann and Louisa Hasse have been involved throughout the year with a fresh view and a lot of commitment in all areas of the publishing house online and/or on site. Those who were on site at the right time were able to take part in our anniversary celebration in a small circle in Leverkusen in May, in our herb hike followed by an appreciation of the 20 years of service of our sales and marketing manager Karen Reinfeld, at one or the other conference or even at Frankfurt Book Fair.
Review of 2024: In essence
For Germany, for Europe, for the world, 2024 was not a year to whole-heartedly celebrate. The dissolution of the German Federal Government, shifts to the right everywhere, wars, power games and nationalisms – these are not the prerequisites that we as humanity need to advance the preservation of our ecological foundations with economic prosperity and social justice.
Climate and environmental protection, equality and integration as well as fairness are exactly the things that are recommended to us in the form of ESG reporting, for example – by politicians. We are committed to these values. We want to face our responsibility, even if we are only a tiny cog in the global machine.
In our mission, we have stipulated that we want to stand up for the social effectiveness of our sciences. We see this as an important contribution to diversity of opinion and, thus, to democracy. We all observe every day how much democracy can come under pressure and how quickly expressions of opinion can lead to the worst hostility. Here, too, we see an important task for us, which we have taken on in the past year. And to which we will dedicate ourselves again in 2025. Continuing to publish and support freedom of expression, based on facts, mutual respect, and human rights.
I have argued a lot with people who find Germany’s contribution to climate change ridiculous. After all, Germany is only responsible for about 1.5% of global CO2 emissions. (Which still puts Germany in the top ten worldwide.) My answer to this: If Germany were the first country in the world to have a negative CO2 footprint – what effect would that have?!
In other words, size alone doesn’t matter!
I thank you for a year full of trust and collaboration, and look forward to a productive, sustainable, peaceful and democratic 2025.
About Barbara Budrich
Barbara began working as an editor at the publishing house Leske + Budrich, which belonged to her father Edmund Budrich, in 1993. In 2004, after the sale of Leske + Budrich, Barbara founded her first own company, the publishing house Verlag Barbara Budrich. In 2007, she founded Budrich UniPress Ltd, which became Budrich Academic Press in 2019. Barbara also works as a coach, author, and translator and has published numerous books and essays.
Header image: unsplash.com / Priscilla Du Preez
Image Barbara Budrich: Nina Schöner Fotografie
