On behalf of Cambridge University Press & Assessment University of Pretoria BIS Publishing Honours alum Andri Johnston accepted the IPG award for suitable publishing, acknowledging both the content that the publisher has created in the past 12 months and the organisations ongoing commitment to combat climate change. The Independent Publishers Guild is the association for the thriving independent publishing sector in the UK and Ireland, representing members from trade, children’s, academic, professional, educational and specialist publishing. Andri joined Cambridge University Press as a digital product manager in 2019 after completing her Masters degree in digital publishing at Oxford Brookes University. She has been working as a digital projects manager and open access editor for books at Cambridge University Press since February of 2021, when she also joined as guest speaker on the Advanced Digital Publishing course (PUB 712) at the University of Pretoria. Over the past two years Andri has contributed meaningfully to learning on issues of sustainability and digital development for UP students, also ensuring that the digital publishing course remains relevant to an international audience.

This is the second year that Cambridge University Press & Assessment receives the sustainability award from the IPG, and they have embraced climate activism throughout their business practice. The publisher states that: “We are committed to reducing our environmental impact across all areas of our operations. We work to support our suppliers to share our ambitions for a carbon zero supply chain, while promoting our environmental ambitions to our people, customers and partners around the world. We have set science-based targets to reduce our carbon footprint and commit to measuring ourselves against the three scopes of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol”. The publisher has committed to being carbon zero on all energy-related emissions by 2048, specifying that they are striving for a 72% reduction by 2030.

Andri accepted the award as a member of the Environmental Action Group, and the leader of the Digital Sustainability Working Group. She is passionate about environmental sustainability and the role of the publishing industry and also runs The Sustainable Library as a blog. At the moment she is excited about leading a project to calculate the digital carbon emissions of all the websites and digital publishing processes at Cambridge University, a first in academic publishing. They will be releasing a report at the end of the year with their findings. Andri will be the second speaker for the Grace’s Girls (Women in Tech) Group started at the Department of Information Science at the University of Pretoria, for more information and to sign up to our newsletter please follow Grace’s Girls on Instagram or email [email protected].