Firenze University Press’ vocation is that of being a public publisher.

a. What does public publisher mean?

We can think of two meanings. The first concerns its actual constitution: FUP is a publishing house conceived, promoted, financed and supported by a public institution, the University of Florence. The most important Italian publisher connected to a public university. The public nature of FUP's resources is essential as for the public nature of its function and the principles that guide its activity.

● FUP promotes an editorial activity inspired by the principles of open access and open science (knowledge as a common good), peer review as a guarantee of quality, civil function of knowledge, environmental sustainability, gender equality and well-being of workers and all those who work in FUP.

● FUP is a non-profit publisher that operates on the market exclusively with the aim of earning additional resources to achieve its public purposes and to guarantee their economic sustainability.

● FUP is a cultural and scientific operator that promotes the dissemination of knowledge and public discussion as essential conditions to the quality of democracy and citizenship.

b. What does a public publisher do?

The activity of FUP as a public publisher is divided into two macro-areas.

1. Editorial Activity

a. FUP creates and distributes, nationally and internationally, editorial products (in digital and paper form) based on the research activities of the University of Florence and other universities and research institutes, both Italian and international.

b. FUP creates and disseminates teaching support tools with particular attention to innovative forms, as well as educational and technological experimentation;

c. Through peer review practices, the FUP scientific community actively contributes to improving the quality of research products and educational support tools.

In carrying out its editorial activity, FUP is guided by the following principles:

a. Promotion and support of basic and curiosity-driven research;

b. Promotion and support of innovative research with respect to methods and paradigms (not main stream);

c. Promotion and support of research internationalization;

d. Promotion and support of interdisciplinary scientific research.

2. Scientific-Cultural Operator

FUP is an institution that actively contributes to the dissemination of knowledge and the promotion of the quality of public discussion. This is achieved by designing and promoting initiatives for the discussion of specific issues and issues of broad cultural significance, relevant for the civil growth of the Italian and European society. In order to pursue these goals, FUP also designs and implements autonomous publishing initiatives (scientific, educational and cultural ones) aimed at promoting knowledge as a tool for the development and emancipation of the human person.