Cardiff University Press’ review of 2018

Happy New Year!  The last year has been very busy for Cardiff University Press, with lots of changes, challenges and new adventures.  Here’s a summary of what we’ve been up to.

• In January, although it seems an age ago now, five of us were interviewed by Terry Morrell of ARK about our work with the Press. You can see extracts from the interviews on our YouTube channel (featured on this blog in August).
• In February we said farewell to Sonja Haerkoenen, our Scholarly Publications Manager, who has returned to her native Germany to work at the University of Augsburg, Bavaria (read her final post on this blog here). The duties of Sonja’s role have been shared between Helen Sharp and Dr Alison Weightman of the University Library Service.
• In March Prof Ben Hannigan was appointed as Chair of our Monograph Commissioning Panel, a new group to manage the submission, peer review and approval processes for our academic monograph publications. On the same day, an academic book manuscript entitled Deconstructing Martial Arts was submitted to us which will become our first published monograph in 2019.  Having made its way through peer reviews and Panel discussions, it was officially approved for publication by our Editorial Board in December.
• In May we also approved the publication of our first conference proceedings volume, which will contain the adjunct papers from a computer studies conference held in September 2019.
• In July our Editor-in-Chief Prof Paul Bowman succeeded Prof Damian Walford Davies as Chair of the Editorial Board, after Damian became a Pro Vice-Chancellor of Cardiff University.
• In August we appointed three new Student Representatives to the Editorial Board, one from each of Cardiff University’s Colleges, ensuring that the student voice within Cardiff University Press is stronger than ever before.
• In September a new publication, the Journal of Corpora and Discourse Studies, was launched on our online platform. Later that month we hosted a one-day introductory course on copyediting and proofreading, led by the Society for Editors and Proofreaders.
• In November two more Cardiff University academics joined the Editorial Board, increasing the membership to 19 people (our biggest ever). The Monograph Commissioning Panel held its first official meeting, and another journal title was launched: the Journal of Antipoetry Studies/Revista de Estudios Antipoéticos (our first bilingual journal, publishing both English and Spanish papers). 
• In December the first Cardiff University Press Annual Report was finalised and distributed in infographic format. One of Cardiff University Press’ founders, University Librarian Janet Peters, took early retirement and has been replaced on the Editorial Board by Tracey Stanley, the Acting University Librarian. In the week before Christmas we published the 30^th anniversary issue of the Welsh Economic Review, our oldest journal – and, as mentioned above, our first monograph was approved for publication.

Phew!  We’ve come a long way in the last year, and 2019 promises to be even more eventful, with (among other things) the long-anticipated publication of our first monograph titles. Onwards and upwards…