‘Being small is not a fault’: Making sense of the newer generation of German-language university presses

International discussion on university presses appears to be dominated by Anglo-American concepts and concerns, passing over many continental European presses that operate in their national contexts. In our article, we provide a case study of Germanlanguage university presses that highlights challenges and opportunities when publishing in languages other than English. A common thread across those university presses is their adoption of open access (OA) publishing. OA has become a necessity for them because the combination of publishing niche scholarship and a potential audience limited by linguistic borders serves to create market conditions that are not viable in a conventional model. Consequently, German university presses have adopted OA publishing earlier than many of their English-speaking counterparts and provide a developed example for some of the ongoing transitions highlighted elsewhere in this journal issue. In the following reflections, we would like to show why several German-speaking university presses operate – similar to Göttingen University Press – as embedded publishers and direct service units for their universities and its members, mostly run by the university libraries. Being embedded refers to the fact that it is the university or the library deciding how the publishing unit operates (budget, personnel, publishing programme, target group, and so on.) and that the press is under the university’s administration rules, which goes beyond reporting to a library director.