Release notes: Book & Press platform (2026)

Notes on the live releases to the Ubiquity book and press platform are listed below, including bug fixes, new features, and enhancements to existing functionality. Bug fixes specific to individual installations are not listed. The dates given are for the end of the development sprint cycle, not the exact date that the release was completed.

Release notes for other years can be found on our central Release Notes page.

See our Release notes: Journal platform for similar updates on our journal platform.

10th March 2026

ID	Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement	Title	Description
PLAT-2032	Enhancement	Rua/Press: Multiple series association	Rua and the press platform now permit books to be assigned to multiple book series, rather than previously being limited to one series per book.
PLAT-296	Enhancement	CMS: Password reset function	The Central Station login page now includes a password reset function
PLAT-2552	Enhancement	Metrics: updated bot list	The OPERAS metrics bot list has been reviewed and updated to ensure that as much non-human usage is removed from the usage metrics.
PLAT-2599	Bug fix	CMS: caching of old contet	Users of the press CMS reported that updated content was not always immediately saved within the CMS preview and that old content was sometimes displayed after the edits had been saved. This error has been fixed so that the preview will always show the most current version of the content.
PLAT-2612	Enhancement	Press: contact form update	Emails received from the site contact forms did not make the sender immediately obvious. The email has now been updated so that the full sender details will be made clear within the email content.
PLAT-2638	Enhancement	Rua: Validation for social media handles within author/user profiles	Rua will now validate whether the correct structured data has been inputted into the social media handle fields within author/user profiles. As this information passes onto the book publication page, the validation adds an additional layer to ensure that the links will correctly point to the desired location.

24 February 2026

ID	Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement	Title	Description
PLAT-2441	Enhancement	Rua: identifier validation	DOIs, ISSNs, ISBNs will now be validated at the point of saving metadata to ensure that unsuitable data is not entered. Warning messages will appear on the screen to the user to alert them if invalid data is entered.
PLAT-2595	Enhancement	Press: ROR logo	If the author/editor of a book is now assigned to an affiliation with a Research Organization Registry (ROR) ID then the ROR logo will appear next to their affiliation name and link out to the relevant ROR page. The affiliation metadata also included the ROR ID so that institutions can more easily track where their researchers are publishing.

10th February 2026

ID	Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement	Title	Description
Various	Enhancement	Press: New Leader Box functionality	The 'Leader Box' block in the press CMS has been upgraded to give a lot more customisation options, allowing for the press site to appear more unique. These include: Dictating the number of rows that the boxes appear on Adding frontend scrolling functionality, so users can scroll arcoss the row (similar to Featured Books/Journals) Ordering functionality, so that it is easy to re-order the boxes Width editor, so that boxes can now be set with custom widths Spacing editor, so that boxes can have custom spacing between columns and rows Text font size editor, so that the content of the boxes doesn't have to match the default fonts Border options, allowing the boxes to enable/disable a border Banner options, allowing a background grey banner to be added, to match the 'Featured' blocks The Leader Box instructions have been updated in the Press CMS user guides
PLAT-2432	Enhancement	Books: Research Organization Registry (ROR) integration	The book management system (Rua) now includes integration with the Research Organization Registry (ROR), allowing the author/editor affiliations, along with the publisher, to have their ROR identifier included within the publication metadata. This identifier is included in the metadata feeds available from the platform and given to indexers/databases. The ROR logo will be added to the book publication page in upcoming work.

Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement

Title

Description

Various

Enhancement

Press: New Leader Box functionality

The 'Leader Box' block in the press CMS has been upgraded to give a lot more customisation options, allowing for the press site to appear more unique. These include:

Dictating the number of rows that the boxes appear on
Adding frontend scrolling functionality, so users can scroll arcoss the row (similar to Featured Books/Journals)
Ordering functionality, so that it is easy to re-order the boxes
Width editor, so that boxes can now be set with custom widths
Spacing editor, so that boxes can have custom spacing between columns and rows
Text font size editor, so that the content of the boxes doesn't have to match the default fonts
Border options, allowing the boxes to enable/disable a border
Banner options, allowing a background grey banner to be added, to match the 'Featured' blocks

The Leader Box instructions have been updated in the Press CMS user guides

PLAT-2432

Enhancement

Books: Research Organization Registry (ROR) integration

The book management system (Rua) now includes integration with the Research Organization Registry (ROR), allowing the author/editor affiliations, along with the publisher, to have their ROR identifier included within the publication metadata. This identifier is included in the metadata feeds available from the platform and given to indexers/databases. The ROR logo will be added to the book publication page in upcoming work.

27th January 2026

ID	Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement	Title	Description
PLAT-2550, PLAT-2548 & PLAT-2547	New feature	Press: Articles now in Semantic Search	The AI Semantic Search will now also surface results for articles from journals associated with the publisher. See https://www.ubiquitypress.com/search?type=semantic&q= for an example. The Semantic search will, by default, search for results from both journals and books. The user can then refine the search by filtering to only show results from one format rather than both. Article thumbnail images have also been added so that their visual identity is retained. A refinement of the Semantic search results was also conducted to ensure that the most relevant results are surfaced above others. This work complements the addition of semantic search on each individual journal site.
PLAT-2556	New feature	Press: Background colour to Wrapper block	The Press CMS 'Wrapper' block now includes a field to set the background colour for that section of the page. This allows a page on the press website to appear more unique and colourful, removing the requirement that all pages have the same background colour. As each page may have multiple Wrapper blocks, a page may also have multiple blocks of colour on the page. See CMS guidelines for more information
PLAT-2545	New Feature	Press: BISAC and Thema codes now searchable	The BISAC and Thema codes on a book publication page have been updated so that: hovering over the code will display the text name so that it is more understandable to a human reader the code can be clicked, which will result in the page loading an advanced search to show all other books that have been published with the same code The Advanced Search on the press site has also been updated so that BISAC and Thema are identifiable Fields to choose, allowing readers the ability to target specific research topics.
PLAT-2542	Enhancement	Press: Nested tables	The press CMS now supports nesting tables within existing cells. For example, the column block may contain tables or additional columns within the cell. This feature enhances the capability to customize the page design. This enhancement allows for a greater degree of customization in page layout.
PLAT-2543 & PLAT-2553	Bug fix	Press: padding between content	The press websites were occasionally not respecting the padding that had been entered between content, with text overlapping images. This has been fixed.
PLAT-2523	Bug fix	Press: Advanced search date selection	A bug was discovered that was limiting the functionality of the date selection options on the advanced search. This has been fixed.

13th January 2026

ID	Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement	Title	Description
PLAT-2534	Enhancement	Press: Table of Content block improvement	The Table of Contents requires an 'ID' within the HTML to anchor to. Previously these IDs needed to be manually added but they are now created automatically so that the Table of Contents block can be quickly added to any custom page.
PLAT-2528	Bug fix	Press: Videos not streaming	Some videos were failing to stream from the Videos block. The iframe used to display the videos has been updated so that streaming now works as expected.
PLAT-2524	Enhancement	Press: Plausible 'Event name' integration	A number of the press CMS blocks now include fields to add specific integration with Plausible so that enhanced site usage can be tracked, allowing for greater insight into how readers are using the site. If you would like advise on how to increase the data within Plausible, please speak to your account manager.