| Status: | Active |
| Country: | United Kingdom |
| Headquarters: | Newcastle upon Tyne, England |
| Topics: | Science, technology, medicine, business, transport and architecture |
| Owner: | Graeme Nicol |
Cambridge Scholars Publishing (CSP) is an academic book publisher based in Newcastle upon Tyne, England.[1] It is not affiliated with the University of Cambridge or Cambridge University Press. It was founded by a Cambridge alumnus.[2] For the first owner it began as a hobby, publishing out-of-print Victorian novels. The early catalogue includes works by Dickens, Trollope, and Austen. In 2010, the company was bought by an entrepreneurial engineer (UK).[3]
The company publishes in health science, life science, physical science and social science. In 2018 it published 729 books.
The company previously published academic journals[4] including the discontinued titles Zambia Social Sciences Journal[5] and Review Journal of Political Philosophy.[6] However, as of 2020, Cambridge Scholars did not publish any journals/periodicals.
In 2017, David H. Kaye's Flaky Academic Journals noted that "the journals do not look stellar. No editorial boards are listed",[7] but journals are no longer published, and as of 2020, an editorial board of international scholars is now listed.[8] Cambridge Scholars made an official statement on the site in December 2018 entitled 'In Defense of Cambridge Scholars'[9] in which John Peters, an advisor to Cambridge Scholars Publishing, commented on the statements made on the site stating "There are no charges to publish. There is no requirement on authors for a buy-back in return for publication. Royalties are accrued to the author from the first sale of a title. Decisions to publish are not taken on likely sales or profitability (which is unusual in a commercial publisher). The commercial risk to publish rests entirely with CSP."
Cambridge Scholars Publishing sends unsolicited emails to potential authors: "Many academics must have at least received an email asking them to publish their undergraduate, masters or PhD dissertations as long as they are a part of some online repository to which these entities have easy access."[10] In February 2018, it was added as a potentially predatory journal publisher to the update to Beall's List of potentially predatory journals or publishers, no longer maintained by Beall but by an anonymous European postdoctoral researcher.[11] [12] the most recent changes shown on the list were in December 2021.[12] a list published by Predatory Reports, "an organization made up of volunteer researchers who have been harmed by predatory publishers and want to help researchers identify trusted journals and publishers for their research",[13] lists Cambridge Scholars in its list of Predatory Publishers[14] and discusses it at length in a July 2023 news post which concludes that "Some studies name CSP as potentially predatory."[15]
The company was founded in 2001[16] by former Cambridge University academics. It relocated to Newcastle when its founders moved to Durham University,[17] and was subsequently sold to a group of Newcastle-based business-people when the original owner left the UK in 2010. The company is now co-owned and managed by Graeme Nicol[18] who bought the company from the original owner in 2011.[19]
The firm is based in the Lady Stephenson Library, a building that was commissioned in 1908 to house one of Newcastle's early public libraries, given to the city by William Haswell Stephenson and named for his wife Eliza Mary Bond, who had died aged 67 in 1901.[20] The building is now the location of four registered companies.[21]