Cardiff University Press’ review of 2019

Happy New Year everyone!

2019 has been an important year for CardiffUP, with several milestones reached and lots to celebrate.  Here are some highlights of our last twelve months:

• In January we welcomed a new Student Representative onto our Editorial Board – Laura Sinclair, a PhD student from the School of Journalism, Media and Culture. By the end of the year Laura had also become the Student Representative on our Monograph Commissioning Panel.
• In March the journal SHARE: Studies in History, Archaeology, Religion and Conservation was officially relaunched after a temporary halt in publication.
• In May we accepted a research report for publication, Reporting on Poverty by Kerry Moore, which is due to be published in spring 2020; and we approved an application for publication from the established and well-respected journal New Readings, which is about to publish its first CardiffUP issue. Also during May, the Editorial Board formally decided to renew our Partner Press Agreement with Ubiquity Press for two more years.
• In June, we accepted another book for publication – Like Any Other Woman by Jac Saorsa with Rebecca Phillips. Later in the month we were delighted to announce the online publication of our very first monograph Deconstructing Martial Arts by Paul Bowman, with the paperback version following in early July.
• Also in July, we accepted another established and well-regarded journal for publication – Assuming Gender. At the end of the month we officially launched the CardiffUP Monograph Awards funding scheme, which provides selected Cardiff University authors and editors with financial support to publish monographs with us.
• In September, our oldest journal Welsh Economic Review became the first CardiffUP title to be accepted for inclusion in the prestigious online Directory of Open Access Journals, which should greatly increase its visibility to the global research community.
• In October, one of our Monograph Commissioning Panel members joined our Editorial Board too – Julie Browne from the School of Medicine. One week later, having progressed rapidly through its editing and production stages, our second monograph Like Any Other Woman was published.  This was very timely for the official launch event of our Monograph Publishing Scheme, held in International Open Access Week.  At the event, we and our invited guests celebrated the publication of our first two books, listened to speeches and enjoyed some great conversations along with our buffet lunch.
• In November, Hélène de Ribaupierre from the School of Computer Science and Informatics joined our Editorial Board, becoming the first Board member from the University’s College of Physical Sciences and Engineering.
• In December, our Editorial Board and Monograph Commissioning Panel met together for the first time to discuss a five-year plan for CardiffUP – we already have plenty of ideas for the future.

In 2020 we look forward to publishing more monographs and journal issues, and to contributing to Cardiff University’s Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021 submissions where we intend to have some of our publications featured.  It looks like we’ll be having another busy year!

Feature: Martial Arts Studies no. 7

We’re happy to announce that Martial Arts Studies issue 7 is now freely available at https://mas.cardiffuniversitypress.org/9/volume/0/issue/7/ . 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 contains an editorial, five articles and three short reviews. The editorial starts by discussing what an “open issue,” such as this one, suggests about the current state of martial arts studies.  The editors note that issue 7 stretches the discussion of the Asian martial arts in geographic terms, and contemplates many complex interactions between physical practice and identity formation.

In their article “The creation of Wing Tsun: a German case study,” Swen Koerner, Mario S. Staller and Benjamin N. Judkins take a detailed look at the global spread of Wing Chun, a hand combat style of kung fu from Guangdong Province.

Next, Kristin Behr and Peter Kuhn examine the “Key factors in career development and transitions in German elite combat sport athletes.” The purpose of their study was to identify factors that facilitate and constrain career development and career transitions. They conclude that an athletic career is a highly complex, multi-layered and individual process.

In the third article, “Fighting gender stereotypes: women’s participation in the martial arts, physical feminism and social change“, Maya Maor explores the social conditions that facilitate gender subversive appropriation in full-contact martial arts, in terms of: 1. close and reciprocal bodily contact, 2. learning new embodiment regimes, and 3. effects of male dominance in the field.

Veronika Partikova continues the ongoing discussion of martial arts and identity formation in “Psychological collectivism in traditional martial arts.” Her paper argues that ‘traditional’ martial arts offer physical skills, moral codes, rituals, roles and hierarchical relationships which, taken together, create the perfect environment for psychological collectivism.

Tim Trausch’s paper “Martial arts and media culture in the information era: glocalization, heterotopia, hyperculture” is derived from the Editor’s Introduction to the collection Chinese martial arts and media culture: global perspectives [Rowman & Littlefield International, 2018]. It argues that recent media texts reflect and (re)produce three paradigms of martial arts and media culture in the information age: glocalization, heterotopia, and hyperculture.

In the review section of this issue, Andreas Niehaus, Leo Istas and Martin Meyer report on the 8th Conference of the German Society of Sport Science’s Committee for Martial Arts Studies, for which the theme was “Experiencing, training and thinking the body in martial arts and martial sports.” Then Spencer Bennington reflects on Udo Moening’s volume Taekwondo: from a martial art to a martial sport. Finally, Qays Stetkevych provides a candid review and close reading of the recently-published Martial arts studies reader [Rowman & Littlefield, 2018].

As always, this issue is freely available online. To find the latest calls for papers and learn more about the journal, go to http://masjournal.org.uk

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…