Emerald Group Publishing

Infobox Company
company_name = Emerald Group Publishing Limited
company_
company_type = Private
foundation = 1967 in Bradford, England
location = West Yorkshire, England
key_people = John Peters; CEO, Martin Fojt; Chairman
industry = Publishing
products = Publisher of print and electronic products
num_employees = 180+
homepage = [http://www.emeraldinsight.com/ www.emeraldinsight.com]

Emerald Group Publishing Limited is a primary publisher of management and business journals. Based in the UK, it operates worldwide with offices in Malaysia, Japan, China, India and the United States.

History

Beginnings

Emerald was formed in 1967 as Management Consultants Bradford (MCB) by a group of academics who were dissatisfied by the publishing outlets of the time. The premise was to focus on niche management disciplines including strategy, change management and international marketing. [cite website
url = http://www.emeraldinsight.com/info/about_emerald/overview/index.jsp#History
title = About Emerald: History
accessdate =2007-09-03] It acquired its first journal, "Management Decision" (originally the "British Journal of Management"), the following year for £1.cite website
url = http://emeraldinsight.com/info/40th_anniversary/timeline.jsp | title=40 Years in Publishing 1967-2007 | accessdate = 2007-09-03]

Fifty academics from the University of Bradford Management Centre each paid £100 for a share in the company in 1969 to allow the company to buy a building on Keighley Road, Bradford, West Yorkshire. MCB subsequently purchased adjacent properties. The first employee was hired in 1970.

Individual journals were managed in separate companies and MCB became a "service company" for the journal companies. As the company continued to grow, by 1977 it was decided that the individual journal companies would be merged into one company, MCB Publications Ltd.

teady growth

The company has attended the Frankfurt Book Fair since 1979 and this has led to various business developments, particularly the acquisition of journals. By 1981 the company had grown to 20 employees and were publishing up to 15 journals including the "International Journal of Social Economics" and the "Journal of Management Development".

An agreement was reached in 1982 to become the Official Publisher for an independent action learning business school (International Management Centres), a relationship which remained in place until 1997. Continued expansion saw a move to Toller Lane, Bradford in 1984. The year also saw the acquisition of Anbar which later became "Emerald Reviews". Throughout the 1980s the number of journals steadily increased and by 1990 it was publishing 65 journals.

Electronic revolution

The technological revolution began to impact work at MCB in 1990 with the introduction of the first marketing database. That same year Apple Macs were introduced to the production department until all artwork was being produced in electronic format as opposed to the traditional hand drawings. More importantly, there was the introduction of electronic data transfer of journals to printers and the possibility of much closer interaction with customers through the World Wide Web. This was followed by the launch of Library Link in 1991 which marked a shift in the attitude of the company when assessing the relationship between publishers and librarians.

In 1992 "Floppy Anbar" (CD-ROM) was launched becoming the first product to be offered in an electronic format. This was accompanied by Literati, a database and network of authors and editors which was the first of its kind in terms of building and nurturing relationships.The company continued to expand on its Toller Lane site, and offices were opened in Japan in 1993, followed by Kuala Lumpur in 1994, while the number of journals increased to 127.

PCs were introduced throughout the organisation in 1994. The same year saw the digitization and launch of the Electronic Management Research Library Database (EMERALD) on CD-ROM. MCB was renamed Emerald in 2001.

Since then the company has constantly updated and evolved its products with Emerald Fulltext becoming available in 1995. This comprehensive online database gave internet access to Emerald's various journals and included a host of associated resources and was rebranded as Emerald Management Xtra in 2004. Building on this idea Emerald launched the ManagementFirst website in 2000 (which later became Emerald ManagementFirst in 2007), aimed specifically at corporate customers, providing management with an easily accessible database to find the latest developments and articles from the world of business.

In 2006 Emerald announced a partnership with iParadigms, the developers of the Turnitin anti-plagiarism detection product. [http://www.emeraldinsight.com/info/about_emerald/News/press/antiplagiarism.jsp]

Thirty-six of their journals are currently included in Journal Citation Reports

Today

Agreements with consortia throughout the world has meant that Emerald is now one of the world's leading publishers, distributing to institutions and businesses worldwide. Emerald works with over 60 consortia worldwide including Nelinet, Solinet and Palinet in the United States, OCUL in Canada [http://www.clickpress.com/releases/Detailed/32635005cp.shtml] , SANLiC in Africa and CAUL in Australia.

The company's expansion meant it necessary to appoint various regional directors to look after the development and management of business throughout the world. This has led to further growth with an estimated 6,000 institutions worldwide now subscribing to Emerald content.

In 2007 Emerald signed an agreement with the DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemainschaft) which was a licence covering 339 universities throughout Germany and was therefore a significant development in the European market.

This re-structuring of the workforce led to a move to Howard House on the outskirts of Bingley, West Yorkshire where new offices are the company's new home.

Republication controversy

In 2004, Phil Davis of Cornell University found duplicate articles in Emerald/MCB University Press journals, including at least 409 examples of articles from sixty-seven journals that were republished without such notification. [cite journal | last = Davis | first = Phil | authorlink = | coauthors = | title = The Ethics of Republishing: A Case Study of Emerald/MCB University Press Journals | journal = Library Resources & Technical Services | volume = 49 | issue = 2 | pages = 72-78 | publisher = ALA | location = | date = | url = http://ecommons.library.cornell.edu/handle/1813/2572 | doi = | id = | accessdate = 2/8/2008 ] Davis argued that "whatever the number, no amount of premeditated covert article duplication is acceptable". [cite website
url = http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA512212.html | title= Online Databases: Duplication Is Ubiquitous | accessdate = 2008-08-02] Emerald undertook its own study and identified 560 republished papers from 1989 to 2004, about 1.1 percent of its total database. At the time Emerald said that it was "updating the database to ensure all attributions are fully visible [including] notification of subsequent publication as well as first publication".

Plans

The company continues to grow through the acquisition of new journals and the development of new products. In 2008 it is hoped that a digital archive will be released featuring the full Emerald collection dating back to 1899. The earliest recorded article comes from the "British Food Journal", and the collection is expected to feature some interesting content such as articles from "Internet Research" (1991), the first journal on record of the internet age, and believed to contain the first reference to the term ‘world wide web’ in a landmark exploratory paper by Sir Tim Berners-Lee.Fact|date=January 2008

Emerald award winners

Notable writers for Emerald publications include Edmund Phelps who in 2006 won Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2006 ‘For his analysis of intertemporal tradeoffs in macroeconomic policy’. Phelps wrote "A Review of Unemployment: Macroeconomic Performance and the Labour Market" in the "Journal of Economic Studies" in 1993. [http://www.emeraldinsight.com/info/about_emerald/News/press/nobelprize.jsp]

tretching into Serials

In 2007 Emerald acquired a programme of Management and Social Science book serials, series and monographs from Elsevier. The acquisition of almost 2,000 titles was a significant move for a publishing company that previously focused on journals into the new world of books.

Press releases

* [http://www.emeraldinsight.com/info/about_emerald/News/press/cilea.jsp Emerald signs new agreement with Cilea]
* [http://www.emeraldinsight.com/info/about_emerald/News/press/isi_2006.jsp Emerald sees strong gains in Thomson Scientific Impact Factors]

References

External links

* [http://www.emeraldinsight.com/ Emerald Website]
* [http://www.iwr.co.uk/information-world-review/features/2189445/first-rate-business-studies/ Feature on Emerald Management First]