Scholarly Publishing in Malaysia: Origins and Current Development

Scholarly books in Malaysia are mainly published by university presses and government’s research institutions. It is carried out as a social responsibility to disseminate knowledge from the researches done, mainly by government servant in the university or research institutions. As such, the number of academic books published in a year is relatively small with limited print-of-run. However, compared with her neighbouring countries, Malaysia has a good structure of governance in scholarly books publishing with the formation of Malaysian Scholarly Books Council or MAPIM which unify all university presses into a single body. This article discusses the history and development of scholarly publishing in Malaysia with the focus to the role of MAPIM of the governing body.