Cardiff University Press’ review of 2023

Happy New Year to all our readers and followers!

2023 has been quite a varied year for CardiffUP, keeping us on our toes with new developments as well as achievements. We published our tenth monograph (it’s a big one) and started piloting a new publication process for conference proceedings volumes. Two brand-new titles were also added to our journal portfolio.

Here are some highlights of our last 12 months:

• In March 2023, we accepted Agoriad: a Journal of Spatial Theory and the European Journal of Microwave Energy for publication.
• In July, the Journal of Ammonia Energy published its first issue.
• In September, the European Journal of Microwave Energy website went live, with the Agoriad website following in December. Both are now accepting submissions for their inaugural issues.
• September also saw our monograph publishing programme reach double figures with the online publication of our tenth monograph, The Material Culture of English Rural Households c.1250-1600 by Ben Jervis et al.
• Over a seven-week period in the autumn, the editorial team of Martial Arts Studies achieved an indexing hat-trick, getting the journal listed for the first time in the Scopus, Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and EBSCO databases.
• In November, JOMEC Journal was officially recognised as a Class A scientific journal by Agenzia Nazionale di Valutazione del Sistema Universitario e della Ricerca (ANVUR), the Italian National Agency for the Evaluation of University and Research Institutes.
• In December, Intersectional Perspectives became the third CardiffUP journal to be indexed in EBSCO, the first two being the Journal for Late Antique Religion and Culture and Martial Arts Studies.

We expect 2024 to be a busy, fruitful year for both new monograph submissions and journal issues. If you’re interested in submitting your work for possible publication with us, please read the submission guidelines on our website and contact us with any queries you may have.

CardiffUP’s tenth monograph: The Material Culture of English Rural Households c.1250-1600

The Monograph Publishing Programme of Cardiff University Press was launched in 2019 and aimed to publish 2-3 Open Access monographs per year. We’ve succeeded in keeping to this schedule, publishing our tenth title in September 2023. The Material Culture of English Rural Households c.1250-1600 is authored by Ben Jervis (formerly Cardiff University, now University of Leicester), Chris Briggs (University of Cambridge), Alice Forward (University of Leicester), Tomasz Gromelski (University of Oxford) and Matthew Tompkins (University of Leicester).

The monograph provides a detailed examination of the possessions of non-elite rural households in medieval England.  Drawing on the results of the project “Living Standards and Material Culture in English Rural Households, 1300-1600”, which was funded by the Leverhulme Trust, it represents the first national-scale interdisciplinary analysis of non-elite consumption in the later Middle Ages.

The research takes into account the rise in living standards in England following the Black Death, the commercialisation of the English economy and the timing of a “revolution” in consumer behaviour. Its focus on non-elite rural households is unusual. Considerable research has been done on the possessions of the great households and of people living in larger towns, but researchers have struggled to identify appropriate sources for understanding the possessions of those living in the countryside, even though they formed the majority of England’s population in medieval times. This monograph addresses the gap in understanding.

The study combines three sources of data to address two questions: what goods did medieval households own, and what influenced their consumption habits? The first source is archaeological evidence, comprising 14,706 objects recovered from archaeological excavations. The monograph collects together this data, much of which is unpublished and therefore inaccessible to researchers. The second dataset comes from lists of the seized goods of felons, outlaws and suicides collated by the Escheator, a royal official, in the 14^th and 15^th centuries. The Escheator’s work is poorly understood, but these lists, relating to some of the poorest people in medieval society (for whom traditional sources such as wills and probate inventories don’t exist), provide new insights into the living standards of rural households. The lists typically record and value the possessions of a household, meaning that it’s possible to present a quantitative analysis of non-elite consumption for the first time. The final dataset comes from equivalent lists compiled by the Coroner for the 16^th century. An interdisciplinary approach is essential, as many objects identified archaeologically don’t occur in the written records, and goods such as textiles don’t survive in the ground. Drawing these sources together therefore allows the presentation of a more comprehensive analysis of the possessions of medieval households. The possessions include kitchen equipment, tableware, furniture, clothing and personal items.

Discover this and other CardiffUP monographs at https://cardiffuniversitypress.org/site/books/ – free to read and download.

Cardiff University Press’ review of 2022

Happy New Year to all our readers and followers!

2022 has been another eventful year for CardiffUP, with some really encouraging new developments. We published three monographs in the space of five months – you can find out more about them in this post – and we accepted another one for publication later this year. We’ve also launched a new journal, the 13th title in our journal portfolio.

Here are some highlights of our last 12 months:

• Following an excellent response to the call for expressions of interest in membership of the CardiffUP Editorial Board last January, we welcomed nine new members in the first half of the year. Staff and students step down from the Board every now and then, as their careers develop and change – although we’re sorry to see them leave, opportunities then arise to refresh the membership. The different areas of specialist knowledge and experience that our new members have brought to the Board during 2022 are proving invaluable.
• The current sub-groups of the Board, one for monographs and the other for strategy and advocacy, have also been re-energised by the addition of two new members each.
• In May, we published our seventh monograph, The face-to-face principle: science, trust, democracy and the internet by Harry Collins et al.
• This was followed in August by our eighth one, Digital supply chain transformation: emerging technologies for sustainable growth, editedby Yingli Wang and Stephen Pettit.
• October saw the publication of our ninth monograph, Divine descent and the four world-ages in the Mahābhārata: or, why does the Kṛṣṇa avatāra inaugurate the worst yuga? by Simon Brodbeck.
• In September, we officially launched the Journal of Ammonia Energy (JAE)  at the 1^st Symposium on Ammonia Energy, hosted by Cardiff University. This is the first CardiffUP journal from the College of Physical Sciences and Engineering, and its inaugural issue is due for publication next May.
• Throughout the year, the Strategy and Advocacy sub-group of our Editorial Board has been improving the visibility of CardiffUP and building support for it within Cardiff University. This has been achieved by holding meetings with key stakeholders, organising exhibitor stands at conferences and other events on campus, exploring new funding and partnership opportunities, and informal networking.

We look forward to expanding our range of publications and developing CardiffUP further in 2023. If you’re interested in submitting your work for possible publication with us, please read the submission guidelines on our website and contact us with any queries you may have.

Cardiff University Press’ review of 2021

Happy New Year to all our readers and followers!

CardiffUP has continued to raise its profile and publish valuable original research outputs during 2021. The numerous challenges of the pandemic have often steered academics towards focusing more on teaching and less on research, but that didn’t prevent our hardworking journal editors from putting together this year’s high-quality volumes and issues. We’ve also launched a brand new journal and another is planned for next summer. The monograph publishing programme has been making very good progress, with another title published, two titles approved for publication and a further two in peer review by the end of 2021.

Here are some highlights of our last twelve months:

• In January, we completed our Annual Report and Future Vision document (copies available on request), looking back on the successes of 2019-20 and forward to what CardiffUP could potentially achieve in the next five years.
• Also in January, we decided to renew our Partner Press Agreement with online hosting platform provider Ubiquity Press for another three years.
• In February, we welcomed Claire Gorrara as a new member of the CardiffUP Editorial Board.
• In March, Cardiff University submitted its chosen publications for the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021 assessment, five of which had been published by CardiffUP.
• In April, the British Student Doctor Journal published its much-anticipated LGBTQ+ special issue. This guest post outlines the background to the issue.
• In June, we approved a new journal for publication, the forthcoming Journal of Ammonia Energy (JAE).
• In August, we published our sixth monograph, Educators of Healthcare Professionals: Agreeing a Shared Purpose by Julie Browne et al. Read more about the monograph in this guest post.
• In September, we approved two more monographs for publication in 2022.
• In October, we launched the student-led journal Intersectional Perspectives: Identity, Culture, and Society (IPICS), increasing our journal portfolio to 12 titles. Find out more about IPICS in this post.
• In November and early December, we redesigned the home page of our website, making it easier for everyone to keep track of the latest CardiffUP developments.

We look forward to publishing more monographs and journal articles in the coming year. If you’re interested in submitting your work for possible publication with us, please read the submission guidelines on our website and contact us with any queries you may have.

Promoting intersectionality with our new student-led journal

We at CardiffUP are very proud to announce the launch of our new journal, Intersectional Perspectives: Identity, Culture, and Society (IPICS), on 25 October 2021. Along with all our other publications, this is an Open Access title – so you can read and download the launch issue completely free of charge, without embargoes or other restrictions.

The launch is taking place virtually on the first day of International Open Access Week 2021, an annual celebration of the principles of Open Access. This year the theme of OA Week is “It matters how we open knowledge: building structural equity.” An introductory blog post from the organisers of the event states:

“Diversity, equity, and inclusion must be consistently prioritized year-round and integrated into the fabric of the open community, from how our infrastructure is built to how we organize community discussions to the governance structures we use.”

We’ve been improving our own level of compliance with this requirement since our first publications appeared online, and we’re committed to continuing to do so. We offer publishing opportunities to academics and students across the globe, regardless of how they identify themselves or what their protected group status is, and our publications frequently discuss topics related to disability, sexual orientation, sex, nationality and other protected characteristics. Here are some examples of these publications, including the special issue featured in our previous blog post in May:

• disability
• sexual orientation
• sex
• nationality

Intersectional Perspectives takes this commitment to diversity and inclusion one step further. Intersectionality can be defined as two or more forms of identity or protected characteristics interacting with each other, often creating new types of discrimination or social oppression as a result. The journal will bring intersectionality into the foreground, exploring the representation and construction of identity, sexuality, race and gender in social and cultural texts, discourses, practices and subjectivities, publishing articles that address how these markers of identity challenge or intersect with culture and society.

It’s one of four student-led journals in our journal portfolio, which means that it’s edited and managed by students. The Editor-in-Chief Arwa Al-Mubaddel, and her Associate Editors Beth Pyner and Ethan Evans, are all PhD students in Cardiff University’s School of English, Communication and Philosophy. They are supported and advised by experienced academic and Professional Services staff, some of whom sit on the journal’s Editorial Advisory Board.

Arwa, Beth and Ethan are currently looking to expand their editorial team, so if you’re interested in working for the journal, contact them at intersections@cardiff.ac.uk .

Find out more about the journal

Discover how to submit your work to CardiffUP

Innovative publishing (ad)ventures: My experience of managing Cardiff University Press

In my capacity as Scholarly Publications Manager I have had the privilege to manage Cardiff University Press, our Diamond Open Access online publishing house, for the past 2.5 years.

During this time, we’ve grown from 5 to 12 titles, have moved from our initial open source hosting platform to a professional platform provider and have prepared the ground for launching monograph publishing. We have hosted events, registered our Open Access archiving policies on Sherpa Romeo and started depositing our content on Portico for preservation.

Managing a Press has been a new experience for me, and a steep learning curve, but I have thoroughly enjoyed the challenge! The Cardiff University Press Editorial Board includes enthusiastic academic staff and students from a range of Schools and Colleges. This has allowed me to draw on their expertise and diverse perspectives on many areas of publishing, shaping our strategy, vision and mission for the Press. 

It’s been an absolute pleasure seeing the Press grow and develop and being part of this journey. I have learned a lot during my time with the Press, but if I had to summarise what has helped me most it would be these points below:

1. Get the basics right at the start (workflows, policies, contracts), i.e. walk before you run
2. Be open to change and adapt what you are doing, and how you are doing it
3. Take your editors with you – keep them informed and supported along the way
4. Be realistic and pragmatic – unless you have unlimited resources you will need to make important decisions on where your limits are
5. Keep your enthusiasm – it’s vital!

I look forward to following Cardiff University Press and its next exciting steps from afar!

 

Sonja Haerkoenen

Feature: Martial Arts Studies no. 5

We are pleased to announce that Martial Arts Studies no. 5 is now available at https://mas.cardiffuniversitypress.org/6/volume/0/issue/5/. Martial Arts Studies is the premier scholarly source for interdisciplinary work on a variety of topics surrounding the practice, sociology, history and media representation of the modern combat sports and traditional martial arts. Published twice yearly, it presents the best research written and reviewed by leaders in the field.  

This issue begins with an editorial discussion, followed by five articles and three book reviews. The editorial asks how we as scholars can demonstrate to colleagues that the martial arts, and by extension martial arts studies, really matter. 
In Affective Mythologies and “The Notorious” Conor McGregor, Darren Kelsey asks what role mysticism, and the notion of the ‘monomyth’, might have played in the career of one of MMA’s most successful and famous fighters. He finds that it is probably impossible to understand this without tackling the role of mysticism, myth and ideology in popular culture. 

The second paper takes us to the kung fu schools of Singapore’s red-light district. Drawing on his extensive fieldwork in ‘Hong Shen Choy Li Fut’ kung fu, anthropologist D. S. Farrer asks searching questions about the purpose and outcome of taolu (also known as ‘sets’, ‘forms’, or ‘kata’) training in traditional Chinese martial arts. 

In the third paper, Thomas, Lugo, Channon and Spence investigate The Influence of Competitive Co-action on Kata Performance in Japanese Karate. Their paper adds to the literature on ‘social facilitation’ within competitive sports by demonstrating that co-action has a notable impact on measurable outcomes within the martial arts. 
Martin Minarik then discusses the relationship between theatrical performance, social values and the martial arts in Ideological Efficacy Before Martial Efficacy. While his basic findings are likely broadly applicable, in this paper Minarik focuses on Japanese gendai budo.

The final research article in the issue is Tales of a Tireur: Being a Savate Teacher in Contemporary Britain.  Produced by the practitioner/scholar team of Southwood and Delamont, this paper offers an ethnographic examination of the classes and career of one of the UK’s top Savate instructors.  The paper is also important as Savate (popular in France, Belgium and Eastern Europe) has been neglected in the English language martial arts studies literature. 

In the first of three book reviews, Emelyne Godfrey provides an assessment of Wendy Rouse’s recent volume Her Own Hero: The Origins of the Women’s Self-Defense Movement (New York UP, 2017). Russell Alexander Stepp brings his own medievalist background to bear in an examination of Daniel Jacquet, Karin Verelst and Timothy Dawson’s (eds.) Late Medieval and Early Modern Fightbooks (Brill, 2016). Finally Craig Owen reviews Embodying Brazil: An Ethnography of Diaspora Capoeira by Sara Delamont, Neil Stephens and Claudio Campos (Routledge, 2017). He also asks important questions about the role of video and other media sources in academic publishing.

As always, this issue is freely available at https://mas.cardiffuniversitypress.org/6/volume/0/issue/5/. Visit our webpages to learn more about the journal or to find our call for papers. https://mas.cardiffuniversitypress.org/ and http://masjournal.org.uk/

Cardiff University Press’ Review of 2017

As we begin 2018, we’ve been looking back at our activities over the last 12 months. It was certainly an eventful year for us! Here are some highlights:

• In January, we focussed our attention on our mission to support the professionalisation of students. Harriet Gordon and Evelina Kazakevičiūtė, who are both studying for their PhDs at Cardiff University, were welcomed onto the Press Editorial Board as our first ever Student Representatives.  We also conducted an informal survey among our editorial teams to find out more about aspects of student engagement in our publications. At the end of the month, our newest student-led journal was launched – The British Student Doctor.
• In March, we received final confirmation that funding had been approved to establish monograph printing. We spent the next few months assessing suppliers against our needs.
  
• In April, the journal Asian Literature and Translation was relaunched as a Cardiff University Press title. Three days later we accepted two new titles for publication: the Journal of Corpora and Discourse Studies and our first series of working papers, the Design Research Working Paper Series.  As a result, all three Cardiff University Colleges were represented in our publications portfolio for the very first time.
• In May, we held our fascinating and very enjoyable Publications Showcase and first Editors’ Forum, bringing together representatives from all of our editorial teams in one place.
• In June, we had another journal relaunch, with the first issue of Romantic Textualities to be published by the Press.
  
• In July, we signed our Partner Press contract with Ubiquity Press.
• In October, our portfolio of publications and our website were successfully transferred over to the Ubiquity Press hosting platform. We also launched this blog!
• In December, we accepted a second working paper series for publication, Attic Inscriptions in UK Collections. We were also pleased to welcome a new member to our Editorial Board: Dr Dylan Foster Evans, Head of the School of Welsh here at Cardiff University.

2018 is undoubtedly going to be just as busy, with lots of new things happening. We’ll keep you informed on this blog site!

Season’s Greetings from our blog family

If you’re following this blog, you may be interested to know that it has some close relatives! Three of the Cardiff University Press journals have their own blog sites, which are run by members of their editorial teams. There is also the Cardiff University Open Access team blog, which is very relevant to us as an Open Access publisher.

https://www.bsdj.org.uk/blog
“The Editor’s Blog” of The British Student Doctor Journal was created in September 2016.  It discusses ethical matters relating to medicine and publishing, and provides fascinating insights from the editors and section editors on how the journal is run.

https://mastudiesrn.wordpress.com/
This is the blog of the Martial Arts Studies Research Network, where the idea of our Martial Arts Studies journal was first conceived. It highlights new academic publications on martial arts, and provides detailed information on the Network’s popular annual conference and other activities.

http://www.romtext.org.uk/blog/
The Romantic Textualities blog is the longest-standing member of our family, having been set up in March 2013. A wide variety of Romantic literature topics (and bloggers) are represented, often with in-depth discussions taking place over a series of posts.

https://cardiffunioa.wordpress.com/
The Cardiff University Open Access blog was launched in International Open Access week 2017. Maintained by the University Library Service’s Open Access Team, the blog provides useful advice and news about Open Access, both at Cardiff University and externally.

Why not follow one or more of our blog family members, to keep yourself up to date with the latest developments in their areas of interest? Happy reading!

The Cardiff University Press team wishes you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Nadolig Llawen a Blwyddyn Newydd Dda!

Our ethical publishing guidelines

As part of Cardiff University Press’ partnership with Ubiquity Press, we’ve adopted the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

COPE was established in 1997 by a small group of journal editors in the UK, but now has over 12,000 members worldwide from all academic fields. Membership is open to editors of academic journals and others interested in publication ethics.

COPE advises publishers like ourselves, as well as the editors of individual journals and series, on a variety of ethical matters relating to publication. Its ethical publishing guidelines ensure a high standard of integrity, accountability and transparency in any publication activities, particularly with regard to the peer review process. Other ethical issues include plagiarism, copyright, or commercial use of content.