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By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
A Call for Researchers To Contribute
In academic publishing, Oxford University Press has announced that it will make available a set of themed search modules in 2024, each combining original research from multiple scholarly disciplines on an international topic.
“Oxford Intersections” is the branding applied to the program, which is expected to open with six themes currently being put together:
- “Racism by Context”
- “AI in Society and Culture”
- “Place and Space”
- “Social Media”
- “Borders”
- “Food Security”
The new facility is expected to “facilitate greater connection in the academic community,” with a general editor appointed to oversee and coordinate “a diverse team of world-leading scholars and researchers from across disciplines.”
New research will be “rapidly integrated” into each so-called “intersection” on an ongoing basis, the company says, “ensuring readers can access the most comprehensive and current thinking on an international topic.”
Each such topic, according to media messaging, has been selected because of “the critical role of interdisciplinary research in helping policy and decision-makers address the world’s most complex and urgent environmental, cultural, political, and psychological challenges, the solutions of which are beyond the scope of a single discipline or area of research.”
Goldsworthy: ‘Some of the Liveliest Work’
No word is included on how to persuade policymakers to avail themselves of this new resource, but Sophie Goldsworthy, director of content strategy and acquisition for research publishing at Oxford University Press, is quoted, saying, “The launch of ‘Intersections’ reflects some of the liveliest work taking place in the academic community and meets the evolving content needs of our readers and users.
Sophie Goldsworthy
“In connecting original research of the highest quality across discipline boundaries, we hope to spotlight pressing topics, collapsing the gap between research and real-world impact to take new work to a broad readership as quickly as possible.”
The new program is presumably out with its announcement this far ahead of its appearance—and without offering a date in 2024—because there’s a call in place for researchers to contribute to “Oxford Intersections.” Those who are interested should send an email to OxfordIntersections.Editorial@oup.com .
The new “Intersections” initiative is to be housed on the Oxford Academic platform, which the company says offers more than 40,000 books and 500 journals. It’s expected that the new resource will boost discoverability and user engagement, of course, with existing research content.
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