Scholarly Communication

In this interview, we talk with Stefan Tanaka, professor emeritus of UCSD and a specialist in modern Japanese history. He is author of two books on modern Japan, Japan's Orient: Rendering Pasts into History (1993) and New Times in Modern Japan (2004), and his most recent book is History Without Chronology (Lever Press, 2019) which we discuss here! The host, Sarah Kearns, was introduced to Tanaka's...

University Press Week 2023 will provide an opportunity for presses and their supporters to shout to the rooftops about the value of the essential work of university presses: giving voice to the scholarship and ideas that shape conversations around the world. Through a variety of publications and platforms, university presses and their authors cultivate and amplify a diverse, inclusive, and exhilar...

Listen to this interview of Konrad Rieck, Professor of Computer Science at Technische Universitat Berlin. We talk about enthusiasm in research and about researching with enthusiasm. Konrad Rieck : "Personally, and as well for my research group, I can say that we try not to lose fun in the whole thing. Because, when a person decides to go for a PhD or for a master's, often there's something inside...

Listen to this interview of David Evans, Professor of Computer Science, University of Virginia. We talk about what makes scientific reading different. David Evans : "Most scientific papers are making some claim. So, the real goal as a reader is to understand, Do I believe them? Have the authors done what's necessary to make that claim and make it convincing? But there's another goal, too, and that...

Kicking off our new monthly series on freedom of speech, Keith Whittington and Donald Downs discuss the Princeton Principles for a Campus of Free Inquiry. These principles, outlined by a group of scholars convened by Professor Robert P. George here at the James Madison Program in March 2023, expand on the well-known Chicago Principles in ensuring campus free speech and institutional neutrality. Pr...

Listen to this interview of Andreas Zeller, faculty at the CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security and professor for Software Engineering at Saarland University. We talk about essence — that part of your research left when you've boiled it all down to the meaning. Andreas Zeller : "I think of science as a social process. I think of scientists as social beings — as unsocial as we might some...

Listen to this interview of Bo Li, Associate Professor in the Computer Science Department at the University of Chicago and at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. We talk about how your writing can help you think, and about how it can help you collaborate too! Bo Li : "I think it's important to have a sort of research test to justify writing up and submitting a paper. So, I'll take the ide...

The Greco-Egyptian syncretistic god Serapis was used by the 3rd century BCE Ptolemaic pharaohs to impose Greek cultural hegemony and consolidate political power. The Alexandrian Serapeum, sometimes referred to as The Great Library of Alexandria’s “daughter library,” may be seen as an archetype for institutions where religion and secular knowledge come together for the reproduction of ideologies. T...

In this book, Paul A. Thomas—a seasoned Wikipedia contributor who has accrued about 60,000 edits since he started editing in 2007—breaks down the history of the free encyclopedia and explains the process of becoming an editor. Now a newly minted Ph. D. and a library specialist at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, he outlines the many roles a Wikipedia editor can fill. Some editors fix typograp...

The sixth episode of the CEU Press Podcast Series is all about the peer review process. Our guests are Rabea Rittgerodt, senior acquisitions editor for social/cultural history (19th-20th century) at De Gruyter and Jen McCall, CEU Press’s acquisitions editor for the Press’s history list. They talk to host Andrea Talabér about the ups and downs of the peer review process, how peer reviewers can give...

Procrastination. Writer’s block. Feeling stuck. Are you struggling with the blank page? Today’s guest shares her methods that help writers move past these blocks by turning inward to discover their own writing process, and become the writer they already are. Today’s book is Becoming the Writer You Already Are (Sage, 2022), by Dr. Michelle R. Boyd, which helps scholars uncover their unique writing...

The third episode of the CEU Press Podcast Series is all about the book proposal. Our guests, Laura Portwood-Stacer, publishing consultant and developmental editor, and Jen McCall, CEU Press’s acquisitions editor for history titles, talk to host Andrea Talabér about how to put together a book proposal package. In the discussion, Laura and Jen touch upon all aspects of the book proposal from choosi...

In the second Meet the Press episode of the CEU Press Podcast Series, Frances Pinter (Executive Chair, CEU Press) sits down with host Andrea Talabér (Managing Editor, CEU Review of Books) to discuss the Press’ home-grown Open Access (OA) initiative, Opening the Future. Frances explains how the model works, why it is sustainable and why it is beneficial for authors, presses and libraries.  The CEU...

Welcome to the first episode of the CEU Press podcast series! To start us off, Frances Pinter (Executive Chair, CEU Press) and Emily Poznanski (Director, CEU Press) sit down with Andrea Talabér (Managing Editor, CEU Review of Books) to talk about the beginnings of the CEU Press, its mission, how it has developed since its foundation and about the Press’s plans for the future. Ever wonder what goes...

Society and democracy are ever threatened by the fall of fact. Rigorous analysis of facts, the hard boundary between truth and opinion, and fidelity to reputable sources of factual information are all in alarming decline. A 2018 report published by the RAND Corporation labeled this problem "truth decay" and Andrew J. Hoffman lays the challenge of fixing it at the door of the academy.  But, as he p...

How can writing for the general public help scholars to democratize education? Today, The Conversation editor Emily Costello takes us behind the scenes of a “typical” day at her editor’s desk, and shares how The Conversation partners with academics to help them communicate their expertise to a general audience. More about The Conversation: They publish articles written by academic experts for the...

Bookshop.org is an online book retailer that donates more than 80% of its profits to independent bookstores. Launched in 2020, Bookshop.org has already raised more than $27,000,000. In this interview, Andy Hunter, founder and CEO discusses his journey to creating one of the most revolutionary new organizations in the book world. Bookshop has found a way to retain the convenience of online book sho...

Ownership of Knowledge: Beyond Intellectual Property (MIT Press, 2023) provides a framework for knowledge ownership that challenges the mechanisms of inequality in modern society. Scholars of science, technology, medicine, and law have all tended to emphasize knowledge as the sum of human understanding, and its ownership as possession by law. Breaking with traditional discourse on knowledge proper...

Avi Staiman, CEO of Academic Language Experts discusses the how advancements in artificial intelligence are shaping academic publishing. Avi offers various solutions and remedies to concerns around misuse, in addition to offering several tools that can support academics in their writing and research. Sci Writer Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network. Learn more about your a...

In the library profession, and in the world as a whole, the experiences of trans and gender diverse people often go unnoticed, hidden, and ignored. Trans and Gender Diverse Voices in Libraries (Library Juice Press, 2021) is entirely written and edited by trans and gender diverse people involved in the field: its fifty-seven authors include workers from academic and public libraries, special collec...

Niko Pfund joins the podcast to discuss the value of scientific content for building out Large Language Models and some of the challenges around tracking the quality and ownership of aggregated content from unknown sources. We also discuss potential avenues for collaboration between Generative AI companies and scholarly publishers. Niko Pfund is Academic Publisher at Oxford University Press and P...

Do we need bookstores in the twenty-first century? If so, what makes a good one? In Praise of Good Bookstores (Princeton UP, 2022), Jeff Deutsch--the director of Chicago's Seminary Co-op Bookstores, one of the finest bookstores in the world--pays loving tribute to one of our most important and endangered civic institutions. He considers how qualities like space, time, abundance, and community find...

Listen to this interview of Rachael Cayley, Associate Professor in the Graduate Centre for Academic Communication at the University of Toronto, Canada. Rachael also blogs. Her Explorations of Style is a wide-ranging discussion of topics associated with graduate writing. In our interview, we talk about mindset and drafting and revision and structure and writing, writing, writing — basically, all th...

Bianca Vienni-Baptista, Isabel Fletcher, and Catherine Lyall's Foundations of Interdisciplinary and Transdisciplinary Research (Bristol University Press, 2023) is a groundbreaking reader designed to lower the barriers to interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity in research. Edited by experienced researchers from a range of different fields whose work grows out of the SHAPE-ID consortium, it pav...

Does listening to an audio book count as reading? Can audio books help democratize education? Will more academic presses be creating audio versions of their books? Princeton University Press audio books editor Danielle D’Orlando joins us to share about the exciting future of audio books for academia. More about PUP Audio: In 2018, the Princeton University Press team launched the first university p...