Dasar dan Cabaran Penerbitan Ilmiah dari Perspektif Pengamal Penerbitan

For many years now, the university presses have been considered as an important part of the university body. It relevance is stated in the Universities and University Colleges Act 1971 (Act 30). This policy emphasises on the need to have a department to handle university publication and printing. These acts supports the goals of National Book Policy (NBP) which is to increase the number of reading materials and books (productivity output). However, the publication policy specifically does not spell out in detail the functions of the university presses except UKM Press.Currently, university publishers only have an ISO manual to meet the need of assessment and recognition as instructed by the main university. The challenges facing by the university presses have increased with the changes in new technology and a decrease in the usage of human expertise. Hence, the study evaluates the perception of publishers (publication practitioners) on the policies and challenges affecting the publishing industry from the manuscript acquisition to marketing and distribution of books. In reality, the publication policies and challenges can be exposed from the statement and understanding of these publication practitioners.About 11 university presses are involved in this study, and samples representing the universities focus on four distinguished units: (i) editorial, (ii) design, (iii) production, (iv) distribution and marketing. All these 44 samples contained answers to open-ended questions at the end of the questionnaires. The data were analyzed qualitatively by generating the categories and themes from the grounded data. From the findings, the existing similarities and differentiation in the scholarly publishing from the several university presses clearly been shown.