Earlier this year, Avi Staiman, CEO of Academic Language Experts, interviewed Chris Harrison, Publishing Development Director of Humanities and Social Sciences at Cambridge University Press on new and creative models of academic publications that scholars should be aware of that extend beyond the classic manuscript and journal article. This is the first of a three-part series resulting from that interview. You can also watch the full recording of the interview, held on March 22, 2021 as part of the Academic Language Experts ‘Publication Success Interview Series’.

Part 1: The Need for a New Academic Publishing Forum

Avi: What does your current work at CUP look like? Can you take us through your day?

Chris: Most of our editors are based in two locations: Cambridge and New York. We also have an editor in Singapore and editorial groups in Delhi and Melbourne. A typical day is made up of activities from three broad but very overlapping related areas of management. Strategizing, administration and problem-solving. A lot of time is devoted to colleagues, particularly during lockdown, making sure that people are okay. I am happy to say that we are still able to spend a large part of our time with what excites us all in the publishing industry: publishing content.

Avi: Can you tell us about traditional publishing models and how they came to be? Why do you think they have such a strong hold on academia?

Chris: Since the first scientific journal was published in the late 17th century the academic world has been one of books and journals. They have stood the test of time because they have proven to be an incredibly effective and successful way by which scholars can share distinct pieces of research and test out arguments by going through a quality assurance and peer review process.

This process has earned a lot of trust and respect. Once an article has been accepted and published it is part of the academic record and debate. Books are popular because they allow scholars a mature reflection space to present not just their own research but to situate it in a wider literature. Cambridge University Press publishes 1,500 books a year and 400 journals. The academic world wouldn’t be where it is today without books and journals.

Their longevity is also related to something which we are less aware of – that they have become institutionalized as the way by which we organize knowledge and recognize academic careers. The world of ‘publish or perish’ is very much a world of published journal articles or books, as it is the best way of communicating knowledge.

Avi: What made you reach the conclusion that something else needs to be done? When did your thinking about new conceptions for academic publishing come about?

Chris: When I used to be a commissioning editor talking with faculty about their research, I would hear from professors about the material they would like to write, but I also listened to their frustration as it did not fit naturally into the journal’s format, or it was too long or it conflicted with methodologies and so forth.

On the other hand, they did not want to commit to writing a full-length monograph. It is an odd choice that we have to make: either a journal article of about 10,000 words or a monograph of 70,000 – 100,000 words. It’s as if, in the car industry, the global motor industrialists decided only to make zippy little sports cars or great big vans and no mid-sized family car!

Avi: What was the concept that you developed which would address that gap?

Chris: In the old days, when the academic publishing world was very much a print world, there was not very much we could do except sympathize. But as academic scholarly publication has digitized, those distinctions became artificial. So, we had a thought experiment about combining the best features of books and journals – a genuine hybrid combining the best of both worlds.

In the world of journals what works really well is quality assurance, organizing content in a series, and speedy publication. Because journals are a big business, we have developed all sorts of author services which we do not have in the books world which add value to the content. Books provide the value of length.

We also realized that people do not want to make that binary choice between print and digital. They both can coexist and they have different strengths. So, we thought that something which combined the strengths of print and digital should be the way forward. We talked to librarians and professors and came up with the ‘Elements’ concept, and we took the plunge.