Oxford University Press supports SHAPE’s celebration of the social sciences, humanities, and arts

Oxford University Press (OUP) is proud to announce its support of the SHAPE (Social Sciences, Humanities, and the Arts for People and the Economy) initiative, which aims to raise awareness of the term ’SHAPE’ and highlight the role these subjects play in our everyday lives. SHAPE aims to emulate the success of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics), in recognizing the equally valuable contributions made by both STEM and SHAPE in finding solutions to global issues.

As the world’s largest university press, OUP commissions, develops, and publishes a broad portfolio mixing SHAPE and STEM, encouraging interdisciplinarity and a proactive dialogue between the arts and sciences. However, SHAPE researchers have different concerns and needs from their colleagues in STEM, something highlighted by OUP’s recent research into the monograph and its continued role in the social sciences and humanities.

David Clark, Managing Director of the Academic Division at OUP, explains why SHAPE is important to OUP: ‘By adding our voice to those supporting SHAPE, we want to drive forward the social sciences, humanities, and arts, helping guide the future of SHAPE publishing to ensure the continued vitality of the disciplines. While there is great diversity within the fields represented by SHAPE, they are linked by a shared emphasis on analysis, interpretation, creation, communication, and collaboration; skills that are pivotal to our world. OUP is committed to the future of SHAPE – and the first step towards securing that is by using the name.’

OUP is already working to help SHAPE thrive in the new age of digital publishing: OUP acquires and disseminates a unique breadth of content in SHAPE disciplines right across their portfolio, including books, journals, and online products, and is continually innovating to ensure the work published today helps to define new areas of research for the next generations of scholars.

Here is just a snapshot of the vibrant and dynamic work currently taking place in SHAPE at OUP and demonstrates the myriad ways in which academics, researchers, students, and the public can access, interact with, and learn from the best of SHAPE scholarship.

• The journals programme at OUP encompasses many prestigious titles such as The American Historical Review and Quarterly Journal of Economics, and is also leading the way in interdisciplinary and new approaches, with journals such as Digital Scholarship in the Humanities and Q Open.
• Landmark series like Oxford World’s Classics and the Very Short Introductionsare available digitally, facilitating online learning and exploration during the pandemic, as are digital products such as Law Trove which supports young lawyers from university to practice.
• In the last year alone, OUP celebrated winning a trio of prestigious prizes for history publishing, winning a Pulitzer Prize, the Wolfson History Prize, and the Cundill History Prize, while OUP composer Cecelia McDowall was awarded the Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Works Collection.

By supporting this initiative, OUP hopes to amplify its advocacy for the future of SHAPE publishing and champion the contribution it makes in teaching us to better understand ourselves and the world around us.