Following up on this announcement, I would like to point out that this “new concept in academic publishing… combining the best features of books and journals” is not new at all, yet publishers continue to claim this novel idea as their own. 

The idea of these short form works is not new and we saw these in the 1980s with Sage’s “little green books” – the Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences series “has served countless students, instructors, and researchers in learning cutting-edge quantitative techniques. These brief volumes address advanced quantitative topics.”  The first volume – Analysis of Variance by Iverson and Norpoth – was published in 1987.  This was followed shortly by Harwood Fundamentals of Pure and Applied Economics series – “a groundbreaking attempt to provide a comprehensive overview of modern economics. A series of short books - arranged into thematic sections - provides state-of-the-art accounts of key areas within the discipline.”  I don’t have the exact date by it was also around 1987.  While QASS continues to publish, The Harwood series published by Gordon and Breach was never completed.  These are probably not the only attempts of this short format preWWW.

With scholarly content moving online, we started seeing a blurring between journals and books.  I would find authors who had to cut longer review articles in order to get them published in traditional edited book and journal outlets and they would ask if I could publish the longer manuscript – unfortunately these were too long for journals and too short for books.  But recognizing that review articles were the most cited articles in the academic literature, we saw a niche for these longer form works giving authors enough space to have a voice, but not sticking them with 200+ pages to fill.  We liked the idea of journal peer review for quality control, we’d allow authors to update their work online to keep it current, we let the author retain copyright, and we published within 12 weeks of final acceptance both online and in print.  This idea was Foundations and Trends (www.nowpublishers.com), which published its first issue in  June 2004.  In parallel, Morgan and Claypool were developing their Syntheses Digital Library of Engineering and Computer Science where “the basic component of the library is a 50- to 100-page "Lecture"; a self-contained electronic book that synthesizes an important research or development topic, authored by an expert contributor to the field”.  This was launched in October 2005.  These were probably the first two modern (born digital) attempts at the short-form work.

Following the success of these new entries and the “short-form work”, we witnessed many publishers moving into this space including Springer Briefs in 2011 (Springer Briefs “are concise summaries of cutting-edge research and practical applications across a wide spectrum of fields. Featuring compact volumes of 50 to 125 pages, each series covers a range of professional and academic topics.”), Palgrave Pivot in 2012 (“Palgrave Pivot has enabled authors to publish at lengths of between 25,000 and 50,000 words - longer than a journal article, but shorter than a monograph, taking advantage of a swift and flexible publication process to dramatically reduce publication times.”), Elgar Advanced Introductions in 2014 (“stimulating and thoughtful introductions to major fields in the social sciences and law, expertly written by the world’s leading scholars. Designed to be accessible yet rigorous, they offer concise and lucid surveys of the substantive and policy issues associated with discrete subject areas.”), Brill Research Perspectives in 2016 (where “each issue consists of one uniquely focused article of 70-100 pages”), Emerald Point in 2017 (“a short-form book series that promises submission to publication in 12 weeks. This makes it an ideal channel for responses to current affairs and contemporary issues. We also welcome think-pieces or polemics, policy-focused research or findings with relevance for practitioners, and in-depth case studies, as well as theoretical or analytical work.”), and in 2019 Cambridge University Press has given us Cambridge Elements (“a new concept in academic publishing and scholarly communication, combining the best features of books and journals. They consist of original, concise, authoritative, and peer-reviewed scholarly and scientific research, organised into focused series edited by leading scholars, and provide comprehensive coverage of the key topics in disciplines spanning the arts and sciences.”)

Just pointing out that nothing is new and we thank the other publishers for confirming interest in the short-form work and helping make a market for these works.