Publishing in Print and Electronic Formats

Due to scarcity of and limited access to information resources on ACP agricultural and rural development, CTA produces, co-produces and distributes through its Publications Distribution Service (PDS) publications on a large number of related issues, including cross-cutting issues, identified in its Strategic Plan 2007-2010.

CTA co-publishes between 35 and 40 titles every year (new titles, revised editions, translations) with ACP or EU publishing houses and authors. Those titles are promoted in Spore/Esporo and included in the catalogue sent to the PDS subscribers (600 titles in English, French and Portuguese). In 2009, CTA’s co-publishing policy was revisited to improve the procedures and fine-tune the criteria for the co-publications, notably towards a more market-oriented approach. CTA also intends to increase its collaboration with ACP publishing houses on the publication of practical books.

The institutional publications, in print and electronic formats, include CTA’s annual report, CTA seminar proceedings, the information published on the corporate Website and portals and the Centre’s flagship magazine: Spore (English and French) / Esporo (Portuguese). Spore was launched in 1986 (Esporo in 1993), the website in 1998 and the e-mail editions in 2001. Both the print and electronic editions have since gained a wide, faithful audience. In 2008, 46,000 print copies of each issue were distributed (6,000 subscribers for the e-editions) and the website receives an average of 800 visits per day. To further improve Spore/Esporo outreach, a reader survey is currently being conducted and a marketing strategy developed.