Core Activities and Business Focus

Emerald Publishing's primary business is the publication of academic and professional research. While the company was initially established with a concentrated focus on niche management disciplines, including strategy, change management, and international marketing, its scope has broadened considerably over more than five decades in operation.

The company is now a global publisher, specializing in:

• Social Sciences and Management: This remains a foundational area, encompassing management, business, education, library and information studies, and social care.
• Applied Science and Technology: The portfolio includes titles in fields like health, engineering, and technology, expanding beyond its original social science roots. The acquisition of the book catalogue and 35 journal titles from Thomas Telford Limited (TTL), a subsidiary of the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE), in 2023 significantly bolstered its civil engineering and applied science holdings.

Emerald???s business model is centered on curating, peer-reviewing, producing, and disseminating high-quality academic and professional research to a global audience of institutions, businesses, and researchers. It operates worldwide with offices in various international locations, distributing its content to over 4,000 customers in more than 120 countries.

Products and Services

Emerald Publishing offers a comprehensive suite of products and services, primarily categorized as published content and publishing support infrastructure.

I. Published Content and Portfolio

The company manages an extensive portfolio of high-value scholarly content, available in both print and electronic formats, which form the bedrock of its offerings.

• Academic Journals: Emerald manages a portfolio of nearly 300 journals. These cover a vast range of subjects within its core and expanded areas. Examples of high-impact titles include Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal and Gender in Management. Many of these journals benefit from the availability of both printed and electronic formats, often including multi-user networking advantages for institutional customers.
• Books and Book Series: The company has a substantial book program, managing over 2,000 to 2,500 books and book series volumes. This includes monographs, handbooks, and edited collections across management and social sciences. This area grew significantly following the acquisition of a programme of Management and Social Science book serials, series, and monographs from Elsevier in 2007.
• Case Studies: Emerald is a significant provider of teaching and learning materials, managing over 450 teaching cases. These case studies are used by academics and educators globally to bring real-world issues into the classroom for business and management education.
• Online Content Platform: The company???s entire digital collection of journals, books, and case studies is hosted on its international content platform, Emerald Insight. This comprehensive online database offers powerful retrieval software and associated resources, ensuring discoverability for its customers.

II. Digital Products and Professional Services

Beyond its core publishing output, Emerald offers specialized digital products and services aimed at supporting its community of researchers, institutions, and corporate clients.

• Emerald Publishing Services (EPS): This division offers white-label publishing services to institutions, learned societies, and universities, allowing them to manage and elevate their own scholarly journals. EPS provides a full range of publishing support, including:
  • Publishing Infrastructure: Access to an integrated submission and peer review system, plagiarism detection software, and a reviewer locator tool utilizing databases like Web of Science.
  • Production and Dissemination: Management of the production workflow, including online-first publication (EarlyCite), enhanced metadata creation (XML, HTML, PDF), digital object identifier (DOI) allocation, and journal homepage maintenance.
  • Consultancy and Support: Guidance on ethical publishing, rights management, indexing applications (e.g., ESI, Scopus, DOAJ), and in-depth performance reports for editors and journal owners.
• Professional Development Tools: Through strategic acquisitions, Emerald has combined resources under one umbrella to offer support tools for leaders and senior managers in the corporate sector. The combination of GoodPractice, Towards Maturity, and Mind Tools provides a range of learning resources, development support, and strategic tools for professional development, aimed at improving leadership capability and employee effectiveness within organizations.
• Open Access (OA) Initiatives: Emerald is a proponent of Open Access publishing, offering pathways for authors and institutions to publish under OA licenses, such as CC BY 4.0, which maximizes the reach, sharing, and citation of research without charging readers or authors in some models. The company is also a founding signatory of the SDG Publishers Compact, advocating for sustainability and inclusivity in research and publishing, and aligning its work with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

In essence, Emerald Group Publishing Limited operates not just as a traditional scholarly publisher but as a global knowledge provider, offering a dual-pronged service of high-quality, peer-reviewed content and essential infrastructure and tools that support the entire research and professional development lifecycle.