Cambridge University Press is the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by King Henry VIII in 1534, it is the oldest university press in the world. Cambridge University Press merged with Cambridge Assessment to form Cambridge University Press and Assessment under Queen Elizabeth II's approval in August 2021. However, the Press retains an independent existence within the larger entity.
With a global sales presence, publishing hubs, and offices in more than 40 countries, it has published over 50,000 titles by authors from over 100 countries. Its publications include more than 420 academic journals, monographs, reference works, school and university textbooks, and English language teaching and learning publications. It also publishes Bibles, runs a bookshop in Cambridge, sells through Amazon, and has a conference venues business in Cambridge at the Pitt Building and the Sir Geoffrey Cass Sports and Social Centre. It also serves as the King's Printer.
Cambridge University Press, as part of the University of Cambridge, is a non-profit organization. Cambridge University Press joined The Association of American Publishers trade organization in the Hachette v. Internet Archive lawsuit which resulted in the removal of access to over 500,000 books from global readers.
History
thumb|Cambridge University Press head office in [[Cambridge]]
thumb|Cambridge University Press building in Cambridge
Cambridge University Press is the oldest university press in the world. It originated from letters patent granted to the University of Cambridge by Henry VIII in 1534. Cambridge was one of the two privileged presses (the other being Oxford University Press). Authors published by Cambridge have included John Milton, William Harvey, Isaac Newton, Bertrand Russell, and Stephen Hawking.
University printing began in Cambridge when the first practising University Printer, Thomas Thomas, set up a printing house in 1584. The first publication was a book, Two Treatises of the Lord His Holie Supper.
A new home for the press, The Pitt Building, on Trumpington Street in the centre of Cambridge, was completed in 1833, and was designed by Edward Blore. It became a listed building in 1950.
In the early 1800s, the press pioneers the development of stereotype printing, allowing successive printings from one setting.
In 1975, the press launched its English language teaching publishing business.
In 1981, the press moved to a new site on Shaftsbury Road. The Edinburgh Building was purpose-built with an adjoining warehouse to accommodate the press's expansion. It was built in 1979–80 by International Design and Construction.
In 1989, the press acquired the long-established Bible and prayer-book publisher Eyre & Spottiswoode, which gave the press the ancient and unique title of The Queen's Printer.
In 1992, the press opened a bookshop at 1 Trinity Street, Cambridge, which was the oldest-known bookshop site in Britain, as books have been sold there since 1581. In 2008 the shop expanded into 27 Market Hill where its specialist Education and English Language Teaching shop opened the following year. The press bookshop sells Press books as well as Cambridge souvenirs such as mugs, diaries, bags, postcards, maps.
In 1993, the Cass Centre was opened to provide sports and social facilities for employees and their families. and now uses third parties around the world to provide its print publications.
In 2019, the press released a new concept in scholarly publishing through Cambridge Elements where authors whose works are either too short to be printed as a book or too long to qualify as a journal article could have these published within 12 weeks.
In 2021, Cambridge University Press merged with Cambridge Assessment. The new organisation was called Cambridge University Press & Assessment.
In 2022, Amira Bennison was elected chair of the Cambridge University Press academic committee, replacing Kenneth Armstrong.
{| class="wikitable"
|+ Named printers at Cambridge University Press
! Name !! From || To
|-
| Thomas Thomas || 1583 || 1588
|-
| John Legate
||1588
||before 1593
|-
| John Porter
||before 1593
||1606
|-
| Cantrell Legge
||1606
||before 1608
|-
| Thomas Brooke
||before 1608
||1622
|-
| Thomas Buck
||1625
||?
|-
| John Buck
||?
||1630
|-
| Francis Buck
||1630
||1632
|-
| Roger Daniel
||1632
||1650
|-
| John Legate
||1650
||1655
|-
| John Field
||1655
||1669
|-
| Matthew Whinn
||1669
||
|-
| John Hayes
||1669
||1680
|-
| John Peck
||1680
||1682
|-
| Hugh Martin
||1682
||1683
|-
| James Jackson
||1683
||1686
|-
| H Jenkes
||1693
||1697
|-
| Jonathan Pindar
||1697
||1705
|-
| Cornelius Crownfield
||1705
||1730
|-
| Mary Fenner, Thomas & John James
||1734
||1740
|-
| Joseph Bentham
||1740
||1758
|-
| John Baskerville
||1758
||1766
|-
| John Archdeacon
||1766
||1793
|-
| John Burges
||1793
||1802
|-
| John Deighton
||1802
||1804
|-
| Andrew Wilson
||1804
||1809
|-
| John Smith
||1809
||1836
|-
| John William Parker
||1836
||1854
|-
| George Seeley
||1854
||
|-
| Charles John Clay
||1854
||1882
|-
| John Clay
||1882
||1886
|-
| Charles Felix Clay
||1886
||1916
|-
| James Bennet Peace
||1916
||1923
|-
| Walter Lewis
||1923
||1945
|-
| Brooke Crutchley
||1945
||1974
|-
| Euan Phillips
||1974
||1976
|-
| Harris Myers
||1976
||1982
|-
| Geoffrey Cass
||1982
||1983
|-
| Philip Allin
||1983
||1991
|-
| Geoffrey Cass
||1991
||1992
|-
| Anthony K Wilson
||1992
||1999
|-
| Jeremy Mynott
||1999
||2002
|-
| Stephen Bourne
||2002
||2012
|-
| Peter Phillips
||2011
|}
Print and typographic heritage
People
- John Siberch, in 1521 the first printer in Cambridge
- John Baskerville (1707–1775), the official printer; his Cambridge edition of the King James Bible (1763) was considered his masterpiece
- Bruce Rogers (1870–1957), appointed 'printing expert' at the press for two years in 1917
- Stanley Morison (1889–1967), typographical advisor both to the press and to the Monotype Corporation from 1925 to 1954 and, from 1929, also to The Times newspaper
- John Dreyfus (1918–2002), joined the press in 1939 and became Assistant Printer in 1949
- David Kindersley (1915–1995), designed a special typeface, Meliorissimo, for the press's buildings, stationery, signs and vans
- John Peters (1917–1989), designer of Angelus (Monotype, 1954, a 4 point typeface for Bible composition at Cambridge University Press), Castellar (an open caps face, Monotype, 1954? or 1957), Fleet Titling (1967, Monotype Series 632), and Traveller (1964, a Monotype font done for the British Railways
- Gordon Johnson (1943–), chair of the Syndicate governing Cambridge University Press from 1981 to 2010. Sandars Reader in Bibliography in 2009–2010 and lectured on "From printer to publisher: Cambridge University Press transformed, 1950 to 2010."
Publications
- 1584: the press's first publication was a book, Two Treatises of the Lord His Holie Supper. It offers a range of open access publishing options under the heading of Cambridge Open, allowing authors to comply with the Gold Open Access and Green Open Access requirements of major research funders. It published Gold Open Access journals and books and works with publishing partners such as learned societies to develop Open Access for different communities. It supports Green Open Access (also called Green archiving) across its journals and monographs, allowing authors to deposit content in institutional and subject-specific repositories. It also supports sharing on commercial sharing sites through its Cambridge Core Share service.
In recent years it has entered into several Read & Publish Open Access agreements with university libraries and consortia in several countries, including a landmark agreement with the University of California. In its 2019 Annual Report, Cambridge University Press stated that it saw such agreements "as an important stepping stone in the transition to Open Access".
In 2019, the press joined with the University of Cambridge's research and teaching departments to give a unified response to Plan S, which calls for all publications resulting from publicly funded research to be published in compliant open access journals or platforms from 2020. The response emphasized Cambridge's commitment to an open access goal which works effectively for all academic disciplines, was financially sustainable for institutions and high-quality peer review, and which leads to an orderly transition.
The Press is a member of the Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association and the International Association of STM Publishers.
In 2023, more than 50 per cent of Cambridge University Press research articles were in open access mode.
Nobel prize winners published by Cambridge University Press
- J. J. Thomson (Physics – 1906)
- Ernest Rutherford (Chemistry – 1908)
- Niels Bohr (Physics – 1922)
- Werner Heisenberg (Physics – 1932)
- Charles Scott Sherrington (Medicine – 1933)
- Erwin Schrödinger (Physics – 1935)
- James Chadwick (Physics – 1935)
- Patrick Blackett (Physics – 1948)
- John Cockcroft (Physics – 1951)
- Ernest Hemingway (Literature – 1954)
- Alexander R. Todd (Chemistry – 1957)
- Max Perutz (Chemistry – 1962)
- Eugene Wigner (Physics – 1963)
- Max Born (Physics – 1964)
- Nikolay Basov (Physics – 1964)
- Richard Feynman (Physics – 1965)
- Derek Barton (Chemistry – 1969)
- Samuel Beckett (Literature – 1969)
- Simon Kuznets (Economics – 1971)
- Dennis Gabor (Physics – 1971)
- Kenneth Arrow (Economics – 1972)
- Burton Richter (Physics – 1976)
- James Meade (Economics – 1977)
- Nevill Francis Mott (Physics – 1977)
- Herbert A. Simon (Economics – 1978)
- Steven Weinberg (Physics – 1979)
- Abdus Salam (Physics – 1979)
- Subramanyan Chandrasekhar (Physics – 1983)
- Gérard Debreu (Economics – 1983)
- Richard Stone (Economics – 1984)
- Franco Modigliani (Economics – 1985)
- James M. Buchanan (Economics – 1986)
- Wole Soyinka (Literature – 1986)
- Robert Solow (Economics – 1987)
- Pierre-Gilles de Gennes (Physics – 1991)
- Robert Fogel (Economics – 1993)
- Douglass North (Economics – 1993)
- Harry Kroto (Chemistry – 1996)
- William Vickrey (Economics – 1996)
- Claude Cohen-Tannoudji (Physics – 1997)
- William Phillips (Physics – 1997)
- Amartya Sen (Economics – 1998)
- Gerard 't Hooft (Physics – 1999)
- Martinus J. G. Veltman (Physics – 1999)
- James Heckman (Economics – 2000)
- George Akerlof (Economics – 2001)
- Joseph Stiglitz (Economics – 2001)
- Daniel Kahneman (Economics – 2002)
- Vernon L. Smith (Economics – 2002)
- Clive Granger (Economics – 2003)
- Anthony James Leggett (Physics – 2003)
- Edmund Phelps (Economics – 2006)
- Leonid Hurwicz (Economics – 2007)
- Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Peace Prize – 2007)
- Elinor Ostrom (Economics – 2009)
- Thomas A. Steitz (Chemistry – 2009)
- Christopher A. Pissarides (Economics – 2010)
- Peter Diamond (Economics – 2010)
- Christopher A. Sims (Economics – 2011)
- Alvin E. Roth (Economics – 2012)
- Angus Deaton (Economics – 2015)
- Kip Thorne (Physics – 2017)
- Joachim Frank (Chemistry – 2017)
- William Nordhaus (Economics – 2018)
Organisational governance and operational structure
Relationship with the University of Cambridge
thumb|The Pitt Building in Cambridge, which used to be the headquarters of Cambridge University Press, is now a conference venue.
Cambridge University Press was a non-teaching department of the University of Cambridge. The press has, since 1698, been governed by the press 'Syndics' (originally known as the 'Curators'), 18 senior members of the University of Cambridge who, along with other non-executive directors, bring a range of subject and business expertise. The Chair of the syndicate in 2021 was Professor Stephen Toope (Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge). The syndicate has delegated its powers to a Press & Assessment Board; and to an Academic Publishing Committee and an English Language Teaching & Education Publishing Committee.
The Press & Assessment Board is responsible for setting overarching strategic direction. It also published advanced learning materials and reference content as well as 380 journals, of which 43 are 'Gold' Open Access. Open Access articles now account for 15 per cent of articles. The group also published Bibles, and the press was one of only two publishers entitled to publish the Book of Common Prayer and the King James Version of the Bible in England.
- English Language Teaching: published English language teaching courses and resources for learners of all ages around the world.
- 2017, the University of Cambridge announced that Cambridge University Press and Cambridge Assessment would work more closely in future under governance by the Press & Assessment Board.
- 2019, with Cambridge Assessment English acquired the Centre for Evaluation and Monitoring from Durham. CEM provides assessments to measure learner progress and potential, as well as 11 Plus exams for many UK independent and grammar schools.
- 2020, partnered with EDUCATE Ventures, the University College London edtech accelerator, to better understand the challenges and successes of home education during the lockdown.
- 2020, partnered with online library Perlego to offer students access to digital textbooks.
- 2020, the University Cambridge announced it would create a "new unified organization" by merging Cambridge University Press and Cambridge Assessment, to launch 1 August 2021.
- 2021, Cambridge Assessment and Cambridge University Press formally became one organisation under the name Cambridge University Press & Assessment.
Digital developments
thumb|Cambridge University Press sign at the Cambridge HQ
In 2011, Cambridge University Press adopted SAP software. Cambridge University Press works closely with IT services firm Tech Mahindra on SAP, and with Cognizant and Wipro on other systems.
In 2016, Cambridge Books Online and Cambridge Journals Online were replaced by Cambridge Core – a single platform to access its publishing ("the home of academic content from Cambridge University Press"). It provided significantly enhanced interfaces and upgraded navigation capabilities, as well as article-level and chapter-level content selection. A year after Cambridge Core went live, the press launched Cambridge Core Share, functionality to allow users to generate and share links with free access to selected journal articles, an early sign of the press's commitment to open research.
In 2020, Cambridge University Press partnered with online library Perlego to offer students access to digital textbooks.
In 2021, the press began migrating its website onto Drupal.
Controversies
Tax exemption controversy
In May 1940, CUP applied to the Inland Revenue for the exemption of its printing and publishing profits from taxation, equivalent to charitable status. After a November 1940 Inland Revenue hearing, CUP's application was refused "on the ground that, since the Press was printing and publishing for the outside world and not simply for the internal use of the University, the Press's trade went beyond the purpose and objects of the University and (in terms of the Act) was not exercised in the course of the actual carrying out of a primary purpose of the University". In November 1975, with CUP facing financial collapse, CUP's chief executive Geoffrey Cass wrote a 60-page "preliminary letter" to the Inland Revenue again seeking tax-exemption. A year later Cass's application was granted in a letter from the Inland Revenue, though the decision was not made public. After consulting CUP, Cambridge's 'sister' press, the giant Oxford University Press presented their own submission and received similar exemption. In 2003 OUP's tax exemption was publicly attacked by Joel Rickett of The Bookseller in The Guardian. In 2007, with the new 'public benefit' requirement of the revised Charities Act, the issue was re-examined with particular reference to the OUP. In 2008 CUP's and OUP's privilege was attacked by rival publishers. In 2009 The Guardian invited author Andrew Malcolm to write an article on the subject.
In 2007, from the National Archives at Kew, Malcolm obtained scans of CUP's unsuccessful applications for tax-exemption made in the 1940s and 1950s and their later successful applications in the 1970s. He then indexed and posted these on the Akmedea website. Late in 2020, the papers held at Kew were withdrawn from public access and ruled closed for 50 years until 1 January 2029. This rendered the scans on the website their only public source.
In 2021, the documents were cited in a discussion on the formation of Cambridge University Press & Assessment reported in the Cambridge University Reporter. D.D.K.Chow of Trinity College, expressed concerns about the lack of academic leadership of the new body: