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The purpose of this paper is to examine recent trends that have affected university presses (UPs). The increased reliance on digital resources and fiscal constraints within higher education has forced UPs to re-evaluate their position with the scholarly communication system. Responses include an increased focus on partnerships, new forms of publication, changing business models and better meeting customers’ needs.

The authors have reviewed publications on UPs from the past five years and added their viewpoints on current and future trends.

UPs must adapt to resource scarcity and current trends in scholarly communication to remain viable.

Both UPs and academic libraries may gain insights on how to meet the needs of researchers and scholars within a changing environment.

This paper summarizes and evaluates a broad spectrum of research on UPs.

A tropical, salt‐laden atmosphere with all the resultant problems of sand, intense heat and plunging temperatures is certainly not an ideal environment for any aviation ground power system. These conditions do, however, represent just some of the problems that MPL Power Systems plc has had to overcome in order to win a major contract with Plessey Airports for Plaisance Airport on the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. The contract is for the supply of five ‘super‐silenced’ decentralised, weatherproof 400Hz fixed ground power units, complete with crocodile type cable storage devices. Four units are to be located on the aircraft apron with the remaining unit within the ATR42 aircraft hangar.

We understand that at the Annual Meeting of the Iron and Steel Institute it was decided to expel all the alien‐enemy members of that body. In commenting upon this action The Engineer observes that it is some time since the name of the German Emperor was removed from the list of honorary members of the Institution of Civil Engineers, but that up to the present time ordinary alien‐enemy members of this Institution have not been expelled. The same observation applies to the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.

Food has always been an attractive field for the eccentric, the holder of extraordinary views on dietetics and nutrition, the “ back‐to‐nature ” types, whose ideas of what happens to food after it has passed the mouth must be even more fantastic than their knowledge of food values generally. These fanatics invade other spheres, of course. There is the “ fresh air fiend,” who cannot distinguish between fresh air and piercing draughts, with the result that he (or she) scalps everyone unfortunate enough to be travelling in the same railway carriage, but there seems nothing to touch the food faddist. His views attract an inordinate amount of publicity. Sometimes these are based entirely on misconceptions, but more often have orthodox premises, but have become confused and distorted in the person's own process of reasoning.

Portfolio risk in crop insurance due to the systemic nature of crop yield losses has inhibited the development of private crop insurance markets. Government subsidy or reinsurance has therefore been used to support crop insurance programs. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the possibility of converting systemic crop yield risk into “poolable” risk. Specifically, this study examines whether it is possible to remove the co-movement as well as tail dependence of crop yield variables by enlarging the risk pool across different crops and countries.

Hierarchical Kendall copula (HKC) models are used to model potential non-linear correlations of the high-dimensional crop yield variables. A Bayesian estimation approach is applied to account for estimation risk in the copula parameters. A synthetic insurance portfolio is used to evaluate the systemic risk and diversification effect.

The results indicate that the systemic nature – both positive correlation and lower tail dependence – of crop yield risks can be eliminated by combining crop insurance policies across crops and countries.

The study applies the HKC in the context of agricultural risks. Compared to other advanced copulas, the HKC achieves both flexibility and parsimony. The flexibility of the HKC makes it appropriate to precisely represent various correlation structures of crop yield risks while the parsimony makes it computationally efficient in modeling high-dimensional correlation structure.

The current pandemic and ongoing climate risks highlight the limited capacity of various systems, including health and social ones, to respond to population-scale and long-term threats. Practices to reduce the impacts on the health and well-being of populations must evolve from a reactive mode to preventive, proactive and concerted actions beginning at individual and community levels. Experiences and lessons learned from the pandemic will help to better prevent and reduce the psychosocial impacts of floods, or other hydroclimatic risks, in a climate change context.

The present paper first describes the complexity and the challenges associated with climate change and systemic risks. It also presents some systemic frameworks of mental health determinants, and provides an overview of the different types of psychosocial impacts of disasters. Through various Quebec case studies and using lessons learned from past and recent flood-related events, recommendations are made on how to better integrate individual and community factors in disaster response.

Results highlight the fact that people who have been affected by the events are significantly more likely to have mental health problems than those not exposed to flooding. They further demonstrate the adverse and long-term effects of floods on psychological health, notably stemming from indirect stressors at the community and institutional levels. Different strategies are proposed from individual-centered to systemic approaches, in putting forward the advantages from intersectoral and multirisk researches and interventions.

The establishment of an intersectoral flood network, namely the InterSectoral Flood Network of Québec (RIISQ), is presented as an interesting avenue to foster interdisciplinary collaboration and a systemic view of flood risks. Intersectoral work is proving to be a major issue in the management of systemic risks, and should concern communities, health and mental health professionals, and the various levels of governance. As climate change is called upon to lead to more and more systemic risks, close collaboration between all the areas concerned with the management of the factors of vulnerability and exposure of populations will be necessary to respond effectively to damages and impacts (direct and indirect) linked to new meteorological and compound hazards. This means as well to better integrate the communication managers into the risk management team.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the psychological and motivational processes involved in the relationship between two forms of destructive leadership (tyrannical and laissez-faire) and employee health (burnout, affective commitment and job performance). Drawing on self-determination theory, this paper links tyrannical and laissez-faire leadership to employee health through psychological need frustration and poor-quality (controlled) work motivation.

A total of 399 Canadian nurses took part in this cross-sectional study. Structural equational modelling analyses were conducted.

Results show that tyrannical leadership frustrates nurses’ needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness, whereas laissez-faire leadership frustrates nurses’ need for autonomy only. The frustration of needs for autonomy and competence predicts low-quality (controlled) work motivation, which is consequently associated with impaired health (burnout and lower affective commitment as well as performance).

This study contributes to the scarce knowledge regarding the distinct outcomes of destructive forms of leadership and uncovers the specific psychological and motivational pathways through which these types of leadership influence employees’ health.

eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) is an internet-based interactive form of reporting language that is expected to enhance the usefulness of financial reporting (Yuan and Wang, 2009). In the UK and the USA, XBRL is mandatory, and in Australia, it is voluntarily adopted. It has been reported that in the not too distant future, XBRL will be the standard format for the preparation and exchange of business reports (Gettler, 2015). Using an experimental approach, this study assesses the usefulness of financial reports with XBRL tagged information compared to PDF format information for non-professional investors. The authors investigate participants’ perceptions of usefulness in relation to the qualitative characteristics of relevance, understandability and comparability.

This paper uses an experimental approach featuring a profit-forecasting task to determine if participants perceive XBRL-tagged information to be more useful compared to PDF-formatted information.

Results reveal that financial information presented with XBRL tagging is significantly more relevant, understandable and comparable to non-professional investors.

The authors address a gap in the literature by examining XBRL usefulness in Australia where XBRL adoption will be mandated within the not too distant future. Currently, the voluntary adoption of XBRL by preparers and users is low, possibly, because of a lack of awareness about XBRL and its potential benefits. This study yields significant implications for the accounting regulators in creating more awareness on the benefits of using XBRL and to create an impetus for XBRL adoption.

Job demands can contribute to nurses’ turnover intention and this can have an impact on health services among the general population. It appears important to identify the work environment factors associated with turnover intention, as well as the psychological resources liable to act on this relationship. Drawing on self-determination theory (SDT), the purpose of this study (n=1179) is to investigate the relationship between two job demands (role ambiguity and role conflict) and turnover intention, as well as the moderating role of basic need satisfaction (autonomy, competence and relatedness) within these relationships.

This cross-sectional study was conducted among nurses (Québec, Canada). Nurses completed an online questionnaire. To test the proposed moderating effect of satisfaction of the three psychological needs (i.e. autonomy, competence and relatedness) in the relationship between job demands (i.e. role ambiguity and role conflict) and turnover intention, path analysis was conducted using Mplus v.8 (Muthén and Muthen, 2017). Two models, one for each demand, were tested.

As expected, role ambiguity and role conflict are positively related to turnover intention. Results reveal a significant interaction between role ambiguity and satisfaction of the need for autonomy in the prediction of turnover intention. The satisfaction of the need for competence and the satisfaction of the need for relatedness did not moderate the relationship between role ambiguity and turnover intention. Satisfaction of the need for autonomy moderated the relationship between role conflict and turnover intention. Moreover, results revealed a significant interaction between role conflict and satisfaction of the need for competence in the prediction of turnover intention. Satisfaction of the need for relatedness did not moderate the relationship between role conflict and turnover intention.

The results align with the theoretical propositions of several leading theories in occupational health which state that workers’ psychological functioning derives not only from the job characteristics of their work environment, but also from the psychological resources at their disposal. The study contributes to SDT. First, to date, this is the first study to investigate basic psychological need satisfaction as a moderator in the relationship between contextual factors and workers’ functioning. Second, the findings revealed the importance of assessing psychological needs separately, as each contributes in a specific way to workers’ work-related attitudes and adaptation to their professional environment.

Perceptions of autonomy and competence act as key psychological resources for nurses. Managerial support for autonomy (e.g. providing nurses with meaningful information regarding their work) and competence (e.g. providing nurses with frequent positive feedback regarding their work efforts) constitutes a series of key management practices that can foster perceptions of autonomy and competence. The findings show that two role stressors predict nurses’ turnover intention. As such, health care establishments are encouraged to focus on interventions that reduce uncertainties and conflicting situations from nurses (provide clear job descriptions and effective communication).

By promoting a sense of effectiveness and feelings of self-endorsement at work, health care establishments can reduce nurses’ turnover intention and help prevent staffing shortages among this important work group.

Although past research shows that workers’ motivational profile can modulate the relationship between characteristics within the work environment and workers’ functioning, studying the quality of work motivation is not sufficient to completely understand the factors that can influence workers’ reactions to job demands. Need satisfaction is crucial to the development and maintenance of high quality motivation. Evaluating need satisfaction as a moderator in the stressor–strain relationship could offer a better understanding of the psychological experiences that can promote workers’ adaptation to their work environment. To date, no study has investigated the buffering role of psychological needs in the stressor–strain relationship.

The CONFERENCE ON LUBRICATION AND WEAR was arranged by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers at their headquarters, at 1 Birdcage Walk, Westminster, London, S.W.1., on October 1st to 3rd, 1957. Papers were presented and discussed here as well as in Church House, Westminster, in the Assembly Hall of Central Hall, Westminster, and in the Grand Council Chamber of the Federation of British Industries, The President of the Institution, Sir George Nelson, Bart., LL.D., M.I.Mech.E., M.I.E.E., opened the Conference and was supported by the Chairman of the Organizing Committee, Dr. D. Clayton, M.I.Mech.E., who is also the Chairman of the Institution's Lubrication Group.