Swiss Association of Humanities and Social Sciences Publishers (ASESHS) (Association suisse des éditeurs de sciences humaines et sociales in French) was founded in April 2015. Today, the organisation brings together some twenty publishing houses from the three language regions, including Alphil, Antipodes, BHMS, Chronos, Seismo and Georg.
The Swiss Association of Humanities and Social Science Publishers (SHSS) is a professional association whose aim is to defend the interests of its members. It promotes economic and legal conditions that ensure an adequate income for humanities and social science publishers; it develops services for its members; it contributes to the professional training and further education of its members; it establishes and develops relations with the research community; it contributes to the maintenance of supportive and collegial relations between its members.
One of the objectives of the ESHS is to provide a framework for quality work for researchers who wish to disseminate their work. The ESHS supports its members in providing a professional editorial service and in ensuring a wide dissemination of humanities and social sciences works, whatever the form of dissemination (paper books and e-books).
When the SNSF made Open Access compulsory for the publications it supports financially, ASESHS set up Libreo, a common digital platform which aims not only to make the content it produces accessible in a grouped manner and in electronic form, but also to promote it to the public. The platform allows online access, mainly in open access, to scientific literature by downloading or purchasing the productions of the association's member publishers. The platform is not for profit and has a community and federative aim by bringing together the various actors in the field of SHS books: researchers, publishers, experts and libraries. Libreo also represents a quality showcase for the visibility of the writings of researchers in SHS.