Journal articles on the topic 'E-commerce hub'

In this paper, westudies the theoretics and methods about the E-HUB platform.we design the comprehensive evaluation index system of E-commerce project development risks, which is general and feasible. The E-HUB facilitates engineering collaboration and extends capabilities and capacities of its business partners with joint engineering, knowledge and manufacturing resources. Based on E-HUB, the SMEs can solve their complex engineering tasks and participate in projects far exceeding their individual capabilities.

In response to the Tai'an City to seize new opportunities, "building strong economic and cultural city, to create an international tourist city," the goal, to contribute to economic development in Tai'an City, combined with the current actual situation Mountain Tai tourism industry, the paper constructed Mountain Tai tourism e-commerce service platform, and to promote e-commerce operations in the country. This article fully and semi positioned Walks Walks consumer groups, unlike Ctrip, the way cattle and other typical third-party e-commerce platform, Mountain Tai tourism e-commerce service platform can be used as a third-party e-commerce platform consignment of various travel services, but also independent Tarzan become tourist attractions, the official website of Mountain Tai tourism hub, is a full range of travel e-commerce platform.

China’s cross-border e-commerce companies are facing the problem of high logistics cost caused by excessive reliance on road transportation in domestic logistics link. In the long-term development, crossborder e-commerce companies in the United States have adopted the intermodal transportation logistics mode, which can reduced the domestic logistics costs. In order to study the impact of intermodal-transportation logistics mode on the scale of cross-border e-commerce companies, this paper selects the relevant data of Hub Group, the first intermodal marketing company in North America, makes multiple regression analysis, and draws the following conclusion: the intermodal-transportation logistics mode of highway and railway collaborative transportation is conducive to the expansion of cross-border e-commerce business scale.

The core aim of this research paper is to analyze the challenges faced by an E-commerce industry in India. The Indian Economy is proliferating day by day and E- commerce industry is playing an imperative and laudable role in its progress. Still there are enormous sectors that have been untouched by an E-commerce industry in India, particularly in its rural areas. Many consumers in India still follow the traditional purchasing method. Unfortunately, altering customer perception of online shopping has been quite a tough task for the E-commerce industry. According to a survey, India is ranked fourth in the world for its number of Internet users. So, it is expected that India would come into the top 10 E-commerce hub by 2020. Indian buyers are afraid to use new technology in its Initial stage. But, if an E-commerce company could provide proper feedback and knowledge to its customers for online purchasing, it would directly help to increase the sales of the E-commerce websites. This research paper gives a theoretical contribution for analyzing the hurdles in front of the E-commerce industry.

The textile industry needs an e-commerce platform to facilitate purchase of textile goods and to improve connectivity between industries. The textile industry has distinct characteristics from other industry, from its supply chain characteristics to the details of goods sold. Therefore, Indonesia Smart Textile Industry Hub (ISTIH) as a textile e-commerce platform needs to implement different strategy from e-commerce in general. Different strategies will affect the design of user experience or user experience in e-commerce. This journal will discuss how to design e-commerce specifically for textiles using the five planes method. The strategy plane produced the objectives and user needs of e-commerce, the scope plane produced the list of the required features, the structure plane produced detailed flow of user activities, the skeleton plane produced layout designs and information organization in the form of wireframes, and the surface plane produced the design up to the level of interface detail. The interface detail is also designed to meet eight golden rules of interface design. The output produced in this study is the design of the textile e-commerce interface on the alpha version of the website.

This article is dedicated to the problems faced by tax authorities of the Russian Federation in administering e-commerce, as well as possible ways for their solution. The subject of this research is the approaches towards improvement of the existing in the Russian Federation model of tax administration of e-commerce. The goal consists in description of developed by the authors and methods, which would increase effectiveness of the existing in the Russian Federation model of tax administration of e-commerce. The article determines the peculiarities of e-commerce that currently do not allow the tax authorities to implement the existing models of tax administration. Considering the highlighted peculiarities, the author formulates a conclusion on creation of the automated multifactor model of tax administration of e-commerce, using the blockchain technology. The scientific novelty consists in elaboration of completely new approaches to tax administration of e-commerce. One of them is the application of risk matrix of operations on personal accounts for the purposes of tax administration of e-commerce in the B2C segment. Such matrix allows auditing the accounts rendered by companies dealing with e-commerce, as well as determining private entities who conduct unregistered business activity. Recommendations are given on implementation of the model of tax administration with the use of online platform that are the largest hub of e-commerce. Proposals are made on development of the current model of electronic document management that would help tax authorities to implement smart-contracts technologies, which are a part of the blockchain network, into the process of tax administration.

Bonn/Kronberg/Düsseldorf. Die Bedeutung der Innenstädte als Treffpunkt und sozialer Hub wird nach dem Lockdown zunehmen. Verbraucher zeigen Solidarität mit lokalen Einzelhändlern, haben aber auch ihr Einkaufsverhalten geändert und setzen gleichzeitig verstärkt auf E-Commerce, wie die drei aktuellen Studien der Strategie- und Marketingberatung Simon-Kucher & Partners, von Accenture und Alix-Partners zeigen.

Subject area The subject areas are e-commerce, brand management, marketing strategy, digital marketing and supply chain management strategy. Study level/applicability Medium, can be used for undergraduate marketing electives and graduate core courses. Case overview Jumei, founded in 2010, had already become China’s biggest online retailer of beauty products. Its 31-year-old Founder and Chief executive Officer (CEO) Leo Chen had become the youngest CEO of any NYSE listed company in 2014. However, Jumei was currently facing a major milestone. Could it become a mega-commerce hub like Alibaba? Or should it stick to its core product line – cosmetics – which was already being challenged by luxury retailers and other horizontal e-commerce competitors? Expected learning outcomes The case will provide the students the opportunity to conduct a situational analysis Identify and prioritize generic business and marketing strategies, review concepts of brand/line extension and conceive new product ideas, assess Jumei potential as a business-to-customer platform and assess brand equity and potential by comparison to another diversified brand. Supplementary materials Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes. Subject Code: CSS 8: Marketing.

Nature-inspired algorithms (NIAs) have established their promising performance to solve both single-objective optimization problems (SOOPs) and multi-objective optimization problems (MOOPs). Anti-predatory NIA (APNIA) is one of the recently introduced single-objective algorithm based on the self-defense behavior of frogs. This paper extends APNIA as multi-objective algorithm and presents the first proposal of APNIA to solve MOOPs. The proposed algorithm is a posteriori version of APNIA, which is named as multi-objective anti-predatory NIA (MO-APNIA). It uses the concept of Pareto dominance to determine the non-dominated solutions. The performance of the MO-APNIA is established through the experimental evaluation and statistically verified using the Friedman rank test and Holm-Sidak test. MO-APNIA is also employed to solve a multi-objective variant of hub location problem (HLP) from the perspective of the e-commerce logistics. Results indicate that the MO-APNIA is also capable to finds the non-dominated solutions of HLP. This finds immense use in logistics industry.

This article focuses on the emerging supply chain of hardware, software, and engineers transforming warehouses to test bed of innovation for autonomous robots. Although warehouses are controlled environments, they are filled with changing obstacles, traffic, and unexpected surprises. Warehouses used to be the hub of a relatively simple logistics operation. They received and stored pallets of identical goods from manufacturers and importers, and then sent boxes via a conveyor belt or cart to trucks destined for retail outlets. Bruce Welty and his partner have built a world-class e-commerce fulfillment facility, Quiet Logistics, by deploying robots sold by Kiva Systems. The next-generation robots have master control systems to optimize their movements, as do the Kiva robots. However, these new robots are designed to collaborate with human workers rather than banishing them from the aisles, which means the robots must move briskly across the warehouse floor while avoiding people, forklifts, pallets, and boxes. Economics make warehouses a great proving ground for autonomous robots.

Abstract: Livestock markets perform major exchange function of animals in India. These markets play a considerable share in the economic gain of farmers and act as a social and cultural migration hub for the domestic and foreign tourists also. But they are largely unorganized and dominated by informal traders. The structural base of livestock markets determines the sales pattern and the major price value of animals is bagged by middlemen. These markets are functioning under the jurisdiction of the state governments and supervision is under the control of the local bodies. The different marketing strategies in the markets and pricing are affected by qualitative and quantitative factors of animals. The major constraints regarding the livestock markets are the lack of facilities and unawareness of knowledge among the sellers and buyers. The role of livestock markets in disease transmission is also a matter of concern. Details regarding animal movement will facilitate epidemiological studies to prevent contagious diseases from outside the country. In the present COVID-19 pandemic, conventional livestock markets are closed and virtual markets based on online platforms such as Facebook, WhatsApp and E-commerce sites are coming up and these transformations are absolutely inevitable. Keywords: Livestock markets, Marketing strategies, India

In the wave of internationalization, many companies use strategic alliance like an approach to expand and strengthen their businesses. Strategic alliance is also considered to be a highly intelligent approach in green logistics for environment and e-commerce growing quickly and effectively because this is the critical concern worldwide to balance the economic development with the environmental protection. However, a suitable methodology to evaluate and analyze performance of partners is a critical and significant issue for top managers to have effective decisions making for business strategy including alliance strategy in the future. This will improve business performance and reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions among the hot trend of development of green logistics providers. Over past to future forecasting, this paper tries to propose a new approach of data envelopment analysis (DEA) based on grey forecasting and neural network, helping the target company – CSX Corporation make a well-considered decision to select the best strategic alliance candidates. The results indicate that Hub Group Inc. and Con-way Freight are the very best candidates for CSX to have strategic alliances. This combination is suggested not only good for the target company but also beneficial for the partners as well. This is a new studying method in both academic research studies and practical applications by combining Grey theory, neural network and DEA model which probably gives a better “past-present-future” insights into evaluation performance of an industry.

Nowadays, people have an increasing interest in fresh products such as new shoes and cosmetics. To this end, an E-commerce platform Taobao launched a fresh-item hub page on the recommender system, with which customers can freely and exclusively explore and purchase fresh items, namely, the New Tendency page. In this work, we make a first attempt to tackle the fresh-item recommendation task with two major challenges. First, a fresh-item recommendation scenario usually faces the challenge that the training data are highly deficient due to low page views. In this paper, we propose a deep interest-shifting network (DisNet), which transfers knowledge from a huge number of auxiliary data and then shifts user interests with contextual information. Furthermore, three interpretable interest-shifting operators are introduced. Second, since the items are fresh, many of them have never been exposed to users, leading to a severe cold-start problem. Though this problem can be alleviated by knowledge transfer, we further babysit these fully cold-start items by a relational meta-Id-embedding generator (RM-IdEG). Specifically, it trains the item id embeddings in a learning-to-learn manner and integrates relational information for better embedding performance. We conducted comprehensive experiments on both synthetic datasets as well as a real-world dataset. Both DisNet and RM-IdEG significantly outperform state-of-the-art approaches, respectively. Empirical results clearly verify the effectiveness of the proposed techniques, which are arguably promising and scalable in real-world applications.

Purpose – More research is needed to understand the online shopping behaviors and intentions of consumers in emerging economies. The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which key variables from the Technology Acceptance Model (perceived usefulness (PU) and ease of use (PEOU)), and others theoretically associated with digital engagement (distrust, perceived risk (PR), perceived enjoyment (PE) and legal framework (LF)), accounted for variation in online shopping intentions in Pakistan, focussing on affiliates of a large metropolitan university. Design/methodology/approach – Online survey using a convenience sample of university staff, students and alumni recruited through the university’s online network. A questionnaire capturing the above constructs was tested for content validity and reliability prior to dissemination. The survey results were factor analyzed to determine the degree to which the constructs were independent, and regression was used to examine their ability to predict online purchasing intentions. User characteristics were analyzed descriptively. Findings – All six independent factors, PU, PEOU, PR, PE, distrust and LF, in the model were independently predictive of intention to shop online and supported the theoretical model by demonstrating the predicted direction of the relationship. Research limitations/implications – There are limitations in the generalizability of the findings. Most of the data being collected were only from Karachi, the biggest metropolitan city and the business hub of Pakistan. Practical implications – This research may help retailers in becoming e-tailers. The model would also help existing e-tailers to streamline their business according to the research findings. In addition, government may work on policies to provide a better online business environment to the people of Pakistan. Originality/value – A new online shopping model has been discovered for an emerging market, Pakistan. Developing countries could take advantage of this model to get real insights of their e-tailing industry.

The objective of this study is to examine the potential of Dubai as an integrated logistics hub, identify gaps and recommend polices accordingly. The key features of an integrated logistic hub are identified. The logistics performance of Dubai is compared to that of the top ranked logistics performing country, Singapore. Gaps that need to be looked into for Dubai to attain a similar status as Singapore are identified. The views of company managers in Dubai with regards to logistics facilities in Dubai are elicited using a survey method and analyzed. The study reveals that Dubai requires further development and investment to match Singapore’s performance as a logistics hub. The survey results show that high rents and costs of operation will adversely impact on Dubai’s status as a logistics hub. There also appears to be a logistics skill gap amongst the workforce in Dubai and this must be addressed and e-commerce must be encouraged. The regional competitors in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Kuwait pose a challenge to Dubai’s standing as a logistics hub for the region. The financial sector should be developed along with public institutions to facilitate a seamlessly integrated business environment. Much of the emphasis in developing Dubai as a logistics hub is on the physical infrastructure where the developments have been impressive. However, emphasis also needs to be given to containing inflation, developing professionals’ skills, expanding the financial sector and ensuring that government regulation is conducive to business.

Modern approach defines e-commerce as creation and maintenance of web-based relations. It is about enabling retailers, brands and cataloguers to be more consumer-centric across channels. The Asia-Pacific region is proving to be the world's ecommerce market hub in 2015. Because of the growing influence of mobile-oriented search, more online marketplaces, consumer goods and F&B organizations are focusing on bettering their digital visibility. India is witnessing a huge upsurge in the growth figures of this industry. Today Corporate and business houses are facing immense problem of competition, changing customer's tastes and preferences and rising operating costs. Moreover, with the changing lifestyle, customers' demands are also changing. They are searching for easily accessible markets, apt information, greater services and a wide range of comparable items. E-Commerce may reduce many of the disadvantages associated with an isolated location by decreasing marketing, communication, and information costs and increasing access to lower cost suppliers and services. It also facilitates easy transactions between a company and its facilitating partners. E-Commerce may be involved in the design, finance, production, marketing, inventory, distribution, and service aspects of business activities. As such, the use of e-commerce by a firm has the potential to increase revenues from sales as well as significantly decrease costs through greater efficiencies of operation. It provides opportunities to companies to cater huge market segments and at the same time fulfill the emerging requirements of customers with greater ease. Indian e commerce market is in its nascent stage and is holding a good area of untapped markets. The paper presents careful evaluation of opportunities and threats present in the industry along with organisational capabilities essential for a player to exploit the opportunities emerging in the market. A big strategy carries several tactics behind it, which can only be implemented in the direction of environmental flow. Paper focuses on the role of e–commerce as emerging strategic platform for business houses to expand their presence with increased sales, lower cost and enhanced sustainability. Aggressive players smelling the demands of industry to join as a prospector but at the same time they have be aware of environmental changes and have to make experiments in the field.

PurposeDue to wider acceptance of information technology (IT) and e-commerce among the consumers, firms belonging to agri businesses are rapidly redefining IT-driven stakeholders' centric completive strategy for their supply chain. This has forced the firms to understand the stakeholders' information needs and quality they expect from the electronic supply chains. Thus, the present study focusses on developing an information quality framework that ensures the success of stakeholders' centric e-agri supply chain. The study also attempts to investigate the interrelationship between formative endogenous latent variables, i.e. value of information (VoI), e-platform responsiveness (RESP), e-platform aesthetics (SAE), e-platform ease of use (EoU) and fulfillment of expectation (FoE) used in the developing the proposed framework.Design/methodology/approachSurvey based data are obtained from 280 respondents using semistructured questionnaire to validate the proposed theoretical framework. The structural equation modeling is performed using IBM Statistical Product and Service Solutions (SPSS) 16.0 and Analysis of Moment Structures (AMOS) 24.0 package to establish structural model by accommodating determinants of information quality framework identified from extent literature. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) is employed to examine the robustness of manifesting variables that define the latent constructs. The robustness measuring items of constructs are also ensured through specified criteria of reliability, convergent validity and discriminant validity. At last the one-way ANOVA and post-hoc analysis are employed to investigate the stakeholders’ group difference on each study construct.FindingsThe results infer the impact RESP, VoI, SAE and EoU on the fulfillment of expectation (FoE). After applying the bootstrapping technique, it was observed that all causal relationships as proposed in hypotheses H1, H1a, H1b, H2, H3 and H4 have gained significant empirical support, thus verify the framework applicable to e-agri supply chain as the study outcome. Addition to this, SAE mediates relationship of RESP and VoI. The RESP and SAE have an indirect positive effect on “EoU.” Findings also suggest that the intermediaries expect better e-platform responsiveness and value of information from e-agri supply chain as compared to farmers and end consumers.Practical implicationsThe findings of the study emphasized on the importance of five exogenous variables for e-agri supply chain in order to achieve stakeholders' expectation fulfillment on the information delivered through e-agri supply chain. The study is of great significance to the practitioners and management professionals by aiding strategic worth of market expansion by maximizing users' base by developing, deploying and facilitating a responsive and resilient stakeholders' centric e-agri supply chains. The study provides insights to the cross-domain researchers, firms, managers and policymakers to capture detailed and deeper understanding on the system design, stakeholders' behavior and in policy formulation so as to suggest remedial measures to strengthen the stakeholders' belief on relying e-agri supply chain.Originality/valueThe study considers the empirical model that shows the determinants and their relationship in the “information quality framework” as unique and novel contribution in the context of e-agri supply chain. The framework determines the quality and efficacious use of information that regulates the effectiveness of e-platform from stakeholders' perspective. The investigated constructs and their relationship depict their importance in creating systematic value chain of information across the supply chain.

In a TEXT essay in 2004, Philip Edmonds wrote about the publication prospects of graduates of creative writing programs. He depicted the publishing industry of the 1970s and 1980s as a field driven by small presses and literary journals, and lamented the dearth of these publications in today’s industry. Edmonds wrote that our creative writing programs as they stand today are under-performing as they do not deliver on the prime goal of most students: publication. “Ultimately,” he wrote, “creative writing programs can only operate to their full potential alongside an expanding and vibrant publishing culture” (1). As a creative writing and publishing lecturer myself, and one who teaches in the field of publishing and editing, this anxiety rings quite true. I am inherently interested in the creation of a strong and vibrant publishing industry so that promising students and graduates might get the most out of their degrees. As the popularity of creative writing programs grows, what relationships are being formed between writing programs and the broader publishing industry? Furthermore, does a role and responsibility exist for universities themselves to foster the publication of the emerging writers they train? Edmonds argued that the answer could be found not in universities, but in state writers’ centres. He advocated a policy whereby universities and the Australia Council funded the production of literary magazines through state writers’ centres, resulting in a healthier publishing marketplace for creative writing graduates (6). This paper offers a second alternative to this plan, arguing that university presses can play a role in the development of a healthier Australian publishing industry. To do so, it cites three examples of university press interactions with both the broad writing and publishing industry, and more specifically, with creative writing programs. The paper uses these examples—University of Queensland Press, University of Western Australia Press, and Giramondo Publishing (UWS)—in order to begin a broader conversation regarding the role universities can play in the writing and publishing industry. Let us begin by thinking about the university and its traditional role in the development of literature. The university can be thought of as a multi-functional literary institution. This is not a new concept: for centuries, there has been an integral link between the book trade and the university, with universities housing “stationers, scribes, parchment makers, paper makers, bookbinders, and all those associated with making books” (Clement 317). In universities today, we see similar performances of the various stages of literary production. We have students practising creative writing in both undergraduate and postgraduate coursework programs. We have the editing of texts and mentoring of writers through postgraduate creative writing supervision. We have the distribution of texts through sales from university bookshops, and the mass storage and loans of texts in university libraries. And we have the publication of texts through university presses.This point of literary production, the publication of texts through university presses, has traditionally been preoccupied with the publication of scholarly work. However, a number of movements within the publishing industry towards the end of the twentieth century resulted in some university presses shifting their objectives to incorporate trade publishing. The globalization of the publishing industry in the early 1990s led to a general change in the decision-making process of mainstream publishers, where increasingly, publishers looked at the commercial viability of texts rather than their cultural value. These movements, defined by the takeover of many publishing houses by media conglomerates, also placed significant financial pressure on smaller publishers, who struggled to compete with houses now backed by significantly increased fiscal strength. While it is difficult to make general statements about university presses due to their very particular nature, one can read a trend towards trade publishing by a number of university presses in an attempt to alleviate some of these financial pressures. This shift can be seen as one interaction between the university and the broader creative writing discipline. However, not all university presses waited until the financial pressures of the 1990s to move to trade publishing. For some presses, their trade lists have played a significant role in defining their relationship with literary culture. One such example in the Australian landscape is University of Queensland Press. UQP was founded in 1948, and subsisted as purely a scholarly publisher until the 1960s. Its first movements into trade publishing were largely through poetry, originally publishing traditional hardback volumes before moving into paperback, a format considered both innovative and risky at the time. David Malouf found an early home at UQP, and has talked a number of times about his relationship with the press. His desire to produce a poetry format which appealed to a new type of audience spawned the press’s interest in trade publishing. He felt that slim paperback volumes would give poetry a new mass market appeal. On a visit to Brisbane in 1969 I went to talk to Frank Thompson (general manager) at the University of Queensland Press… I told him that I did have a book but that I also had a firm idea of the kind of publication I wanted: a paperback of 64 pages that would sell for a dollar. Frank astonished me by saying … that if his people told him it was financially viable he would do it. He picked up the phone, called in his production crew … and after a quarter of an hour of argument and calculations they came up with the unit cost of, I think, twenty-three cents. ‘Okay, mate,’ Frank told me, ‘you’re on.’ I left with a firm undertaking and a deadline for delivery of the manuscript. (Malouf 72-73) That book of poetry, Bicycle and Other Poems, was Malouf’s first solo volume. It appeared in bookstores in 1970 alongside other slim volumes by Rodney Hall and Michael Dransfield, two men who would go on to become iconic Brisbane poets. Together, these three bold experiments in paperback poetry publishing sold a remarkable 7,000 copies and generated these sales without school or university adoptions, and without any Commonwealth Literary Fund assistance, either. UQP went on to publish 159 new titles of poetry between 1968 and 1996, becoming a significant player in the Australian literary landscape. Through University of Queensland Press’s poetry publishing, we see a way of how the university can interact with the broader writing and publishing industry. This level of cohesion between the publishing house and the industry became one of the distinguishing features of the press in this time. UQP garnered a reputation for fostering Australian writing talent, launching the careers of a generation of Australian authors. Elizabeth Jolley, Roger McDonald, Beverley Farmer, Thea Astley, Janette Turner Hospital, and Peter Carey all found their first home at the press. The university’s publishing house was at the forefront of Australian literary development at a time when Australia was beginning to blossom, culturally, as a nation. What this experience shows is the cultural importance and potential cultural benefit of a high level of cohesion between the university press and the broader writing and publishing industry. UQP has also sought to continue a high level of social cohesion with the local community. The press is significant in that it inhabits a physical space, the city of Brisbane, which is devoid of any other significant trade publishers. In this sense, UQP, and by association, the University of Queensland, has played a leading role in the cultural and literary development of the city. UQP continues to sponsor events such as the Brisbane Writers Festival, and publishes the winning manuscript for the Emerging Queensland Author award at the annual Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards. Another point of interest in this relationship between the press and the university at University of Queensland can be seen in the relationship between UQP and some of the staff in the university’s creative writing department. Novelist, Dr Venero Armanno, senior lecturer in the creative writing program at UQ, shifted from a major international publisher back to his employer’s publishing house in 2007. Armanno’s move to the press was coupled with the appointment at UQP of another University of Queensland creative writing senior lecturer, Dr Bronwyn Lea, as poetry editor (Lea has recently left this post). This sort of connection shapes the public face of creative writing within the university, and heightens the level of cohesion between creative writing programs and university publishing. The main product of this interaction is, perhaps, the level of cohesion between university press and creative writing faculty that the relationship outwardly projects. This interaction leads us to question whether more formal arrangements for the cohesion between creative writing departments and university presses can be put in place. Specifically, the two activities beg the question: why can’t university publishers who publish trade fiction make a commitment to publish work that comes out of their own creative writing programs, and particularly, work out of their research higher degrees? The short answer to this seems to be caught up in the differing objectives of university presses and creative writing programs. The matter is not as cut-and-dry as a press wanting to publish good manuscripts, and a creative writing program, through its research by creative practice, providing that work. A number of issues get in the way: quality of manuscripts, editorial direction of press, areas of specialisation of creative writing faculty, flow of numbers through creative writing programs, to name a few. University of Western Australia Publishing recently played with the idea of how these two elements of creative writing within the university, manuscript production and trade publishing, could work together. UWA Publishing was established in 1935 as UWA Press (the house changed its name to UWA Publishing in 2009). Like University of Queensland Press, the house provides an important literary and cultural voice in Perth, which is not a publishing hub on the scale of Sydney or Melbourne. In 2005, the press, which had a tradition as a strong scholarly publisher and emerging trade publisher, announced a plan to publish a new series of literary fiction written by students in Australian creative writing courses. This was a new idea for UWA Publishing, as the house had previously only published scholarly work, along with natural history, history and children’s books.UWA Publishing fiction series editor Terri-Ann White said that the idea behind the series was to use creative writing postgraduate degrees as a “filter” to get the best emerging writing in Australia.There’s got to be something going for a student writer working with an experienced supervisor with all of the resources of a university. There’s got to be an edge to that kind of enterprise. (In Macnamara 3) As this experiment began in 2005, the result of the press’s doctrine is still unclear. However, it could be interesting to explore the motivations behind the decision to focus fiction publishing on postgraduate student work. Many presses publish student work—N.A. Bourke’s The Bone Flute and Julienne van Loon’s Road Story come to mind as two examples of successful work produced in a creative writing program—but few houses advertise where the manuscript has come from. This is perhaps because of the negative stigma that goes along with student work, that the writing is underdeveloped or, perhaps, formulaic, somehow over-influenced by its supervisor or home institution. UWA Publishing’s decision to take fiction solely from the pool of postgraduate writers is a bold one, and can be seen perhaps as noble by those working within the walls of the university. Without making any assumptions about the sales success of the program, the decision does shape the way in which the press is seen in the broader writing and publishing industry. We can summise from the decision that the list will have a strong literary focus, that the work will be substantial and well-researched, to the point where it could contribute to the bulk of a Masters degree by research, or PhD. The program would also appear to appeal to writing students within the university, all of whom go through their various degrees being told how difficult publication can be for first time writers. Another approach to the relationship between university presses and the broader writing and publishing industry can be seen at the University of Western Sydney. UWS founded a group in 2005 called the Writing and Society Research Group. The group manages the literary journal Heat Magazine and the Giramondo book imprint. Giramondo Publishing was established in 1995 with “the aim of publishing quality creative and interpretative writing by Australian authors”. It states its objectives as seeking to “build a common ground between the academy and the marketplace; to stimulate exchange between Australian writers and readers and their counterparts overseas; and to encourage innovative and adventurous work that might not otherwise find publication because of its subtle commercial appeal” ("Giramondo History"). These objectives demonstrate an almost utopian idea of engaging with the broader writing and publishing industry—here we have a university publisher actively seeking to publish inventive and original work, the sort of work which might be overlooked by other publishers. This philosophical approach indicates the gap which university presses (in an ideal world) would fill in the publishing industry. With the financial support of the university (and, in the case of Giramondo and others, funding bodies such as the Australia Council), university presses can be in a unique position to uphold more traditional literary values. They can focus on the cultural value of books, rather than their commercial potential. In this way, the Writing and Society Research Group at UWS demonstrates a more structural approach to the university’s engagement with the publishing industry. It engages with the industry as a stakeholder of literary values, fulfilling one of the roles of the university as a multi-functional literary institution. It also seeks directly to foster the work of new and emerging writers. Not all universities and university presses will have the autonomy or capacity to act in such a way. What is necessary is constant thought, debate and action towards working out how the university press can be a dynamic and relevant industry player. References Clement, Richard. “Cataloguing Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts.” The Library Quarterly 55 (1985): 316-326. Edmonds, Philip. “Respectable or Risqué: Creative Writing Programs in the Marketplace.” TEXT 8.1 (2004). 27 Jan. 2010 < http://www.textjournal.com.au/april04/edmonds.htm >. “Giramondo History.” Giramondo Publishing. 27 Jan. 2010 < http://www.giramondopublishing.com/history >. Greco, Albert N., Clara E. Rodriguez, and Robert M. Wharton. The Culture and Commerce of Publishing in the 21st Century. Stanford: Stanford Business Books, 2007. Macnamara, Lisa. “Big Break for Student Writers.” The Australian 2 Nov. 2005: Features 3. Malouf, David. In Munro, Craig, ed. UQP: The Writer’s Press: 1948 – 1998. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1998.