Publishing, Academic Series and Continuing Education

Editorial note: This article collects three kinds of "straight facts" that do not belong to the modules covered elsewhere — HKUST's academic publishing ecosystem, its institutional academic series, and its continuing / professional education architecture. It complements the material on the library, special collections, MOOCs and IT (see Library and Digital Education); the ranking record of the Kellogg-HKUST EMBA, flagship of the Business School's executive education, is treated separately in 03 Rankings, where it is referenced here only in structural terms rather than repeated table by table.

---

# 1. A Publishing Ecosystem: No Traditional University Press, Series and Repositories Instead

# 1.1 Contrast with HKU and CUHK

Among the eight UGC-funded universities in Hong Kong, several of the older institutions run traditional university presses: according to Wikipedia^※, Hong Kong University Press was founded in 1956, and per Wikipedia^※, The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press dates from 1977 — each publishing more than 50 scholarly titles a year on average.

By contrast, HKUST has no conventional comprehensive university press. Its research output reaches the outside world through the institutional repository and the publication series of individual research units described below, rather than through a book-publishing operation branded "XX University Press". This reflects the University's "built from scratch, no century of accumulated legacy" founding path: when HKUST opened in 1991 it was positioned from day one as a research-led institution in science, engineering and business, and never inherited the humanities-publishing tradition of the older colonial-era universities. For a full comparison of the eight institutions' founding dates and governance structures, see Hong Kong Tertiary Landscape Compared^※.

Note: The above is a comparative statement based on verifiable sources. This search found no official record of HKUST operating a comprehensive scholarly press under the name "HKUST Press"; readers in possession of evidence to the contrary are welcome to correct the record with a source. Unverified: an officially established comprehensive university press at HKUST.

# 1.2 The Institutional Repository: HKUST SPD

According to the HKUST Scholarly Publications Database guide^※, the HKUST Library runs HKUST SPD (Scholarly Publications Database) together with the Institutional Repository (IR) layered above it: SPD is the index of HKUST's scholarly publications and a subset of the IR, built and maintained by the Library's SPD team; the IR aggregates HKUST research output of all kinds and serves as the unified portal to three constituent databases:

• SPD (Scholarly Publications Database): the master index of HKUST research output, hosting "HKUST Scholar Profiles", which present each researcher's output, impact and expertise.
• HKUST Theses: electronic access to postgraduate theses from HKUST.
• DataSpace@HKUST: the platform for research datasets.

Open-access deposit policy: per the Open Access Policy of the Office of the Vice-President for Research and Development^※, from 29 July 2021 all staff are required to deposit the final accepted manuscript of their research output in the HKUST research platform; journal articles arising from RGC-funded projects dated 2010 or later must be deposited in the institutional repository no later than six months after publication.

# 1.3 Rare & Special e-Zone

The Library also operates the Rare & Special e-Zone (lbezone.hkust.edu.hk), which makes available in digitised form rare Western maps, rare volumes on the history of European science and other special collections (their contents are covered in Library and Digital Education^※ and University Archives and Special Collections^※). This is another facet of HKUST's logic of "replacing a paper press with digital platforms": rather than first founding a press and then talking about digitisation, the University has understood from the outset that "publishing" means repository maintenance and search infrastructure, not the traditional chain of editing–printing–distribution.

# 1.4 Open Access and the Verifiability of Scholarly Output

One direct consequence of the repository route is that the verifiable entry point for HKUST's research output is not "a publisher's catalogue" but a searchable scholar profile. "HKUST Scholar Profiles" within SPD index papers, book chapters and conference papers by department and by author name, so a reader can check any faculty member's public output directly, without going through a third-party publisher's catalogue. This model is structurally homologous to the blockchain credential platform^※ the University launched in 2020, Hong Kong's first (graduates prove their credentials with cryptographically signed diplomas, without having to apply to the University for piecemeal verification) — in both cases the burden of proving authenticity is shifted from the institution onto self-verifying digital credentials/records themselves. It is the same logic of HKUST's digital infrastructure applied in different settings.

---

# 2. Institutional Academic Series (Non-Journal Publications)

HKUST may lack a comprehensive press, but its research units each maintain publication series with genuine academic standing:

# 2.1 IEMS Thought Leadership Brief Series

According to the RePEc/IDEAS index page^※, the EconPapers index page^※ and the IEMS official publications page^※, the Institute for Emerging Market Studies (IEMS) publishes the Thought Leadership Brief series. The series:

• focuses on economic and policy issues in emerging markets, with a particular emphasis on China, Asia and Belt and Road themes, spanning fintech, innovation, the labour market, environmental sustainability and international business.
• is fully indexed in the RePEc / EconPapers economics literature databases (RePEc series code hku:briefs), making it a working-paper series verifiable through independent third-party indexes.
• according to the EconPapers index, comprises roughly 70 briefs spanning about 2015–2022; the IEMS official publications page^※ archives them by year, and the series continues into 2025 with numbering past 90 (Issue 87, autumn 2024, examines InvestLM, a large language model for finance; Issue 92, spring 2025, discusses language learning and cognitive health in older adults), showing that this is a live, ongoing operation rather than a terminated historical project.

Note: The count of briefs and the year range above follow what is captured by the third-party index (EconPapers) and the official archive page; for exact numbering or totals at any given time, please refer to the iems.ust.hk/tlb page as it stands.

Background on the institute: according to the IEMS official "About Us" page^※ and the 2013 HKUST press release^※, IEMS was established on 27 May 2013 with sponsorship from Ernst & Young; its first director was Albert Park, then Chair Professor of Social Science and Professor of Economics at HKUST. The Institute is housed in the Lo Ka Chung Building on the Clear Water Bay campus and pursues research across six themes: human capital and employment, innovation and entrepreneurship, global economic integration, financial development, business and market strategies, and behavioural research, with the Belt and Road Initiative and the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area as priority regions. The Thought Leadership Brief series is one of the Institute's main channels for translating academic research into knowledge products aimed at policymakers and practitioners, sitting alongside working papers, research reports and event digests in its publication portfolio.

# 2.2 IAS Newsletter

According to the official page of the Jockey Club Institute for Advanced Study (IAS)^※, the Institute publishes the IAS Newsletter. As that page indicates, the newsletter appears about twice a year (spring and autumn) and pairs a thematic cover story with "Research Insights" presenting the work of Institute-affiliated scholars across science, engineering and the humanities (recent themes have covered quantum computing, materials science, misinformation, wave physics, virology and more); back issues go back to 2015, some archived as PDFs.

According to the IAS "Research Insights" section page^※, the section is archived both by year (from 2014) and by discipline (biomedical research, creative research, engineering, humanities and social science, physical science, business research), with individual articles such as "A Leap in Topological Research" and "Accessing the Brain", forming a permanently searchable knowledge base independent of the newsletter. This is consistent with the SPD repository's logic of "replacing paper publication with digital search", the difference being that IAS Research Insights curates accessible renderings of its own scholars' work, while SPD holds raw deposits of papers from across the University. The IAS houses specialised centres including the Center for Fundamental Physics and the IAS Center for Quantum Technologies, and hosted the Shaw Prize in Mathematical Sciences lectures in 2025; the newsletter and Research Insights are its routine channels for communicating such cross-disciplinary events and research findings to audiences inside and outside the University.

Note on named entities: "Jockey Club Institute for Advanced Study" and "IEMS" are institutional proper names, recorded as such (neutral-positive). The capital project for the IAS building was funded by the Hong Kong SAR Government and the Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust, a matter of public record.

---

# 3. The Continuing and Professional Education Architecture

HKUST's non-degree / in-service professional education is dispersed across several units, together forming its "continuing education" landscape:

# 3.1 Academy of Continuing Education (ACE), School of Engineering

According to the ACE official mission page^※ and the School of Engineering (SENG) official page^※, the HKUST Academy of Continuing Education (ACE) is the University's first professional education centre in the Greater Bay Area, affiliated with the School of Engineering (SENG) and based in Shenzhen (37/F, Changfu Jinmao Tower, Futian, in the Shenzhen–Hong Kong special cooperation demonstration zone). Its positioning:

• Mission: "to provide professional education and training to enhance the regional talent pool", offering high-quality learning opportunities with an international outlook.
• Operating model: drawing on the expertise of HKUST faculty and their industry connections, it functions as a professional training centre for executive education and the sharing of cutting-edge technology / industry knowledge, running short courses, workshops and seminars, and supporting joint initiatives, research and industry collaboration.
• Course format: professional short courses generally run from two to five days, taught by world-class experts in the field; one-to-two-hour lectures are held from time to time.

According to the ACE course list^※, the specific topics centre on SENG's strengths in engineering — for example "Power Management IC Design", "Computer Vision and Deep Learning", and "Advances in Electrochemical Energy Storage Technology" — with schedules published on demand or announced by email, reflecting an operating character of tailoring to industry demand rather than fixed semester timetables. Contact is via the Shenzhen office email and telephone, consistent with the "SENG-affiliated, Shenzhen-based" positioning noted above.

# 3.2 Business School Executive Education: the Kellogg-HKUST EMBA

The HKUST Business School runs executive education for working managers, whose flagship is the Kellogg-HKUST EMBA (Kellogg-HKUST Executive MBA Program, KH EMBA), run jointly with the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Its record in the Financial Times global EMBA ranking (repeatedly ranked world No. 1) is detailed in 03 Rankings^※; this article does not repeat the year-by-year figures, but adds the institutional history and structural facts:

• Origins: according to the Wikipedia entry^※ and the Poets & Quants 25th-anniversary report^※, the programme was founded in 1998, with the then Dean of the HKUST Business School, Professor Chan Yuk-shee, leading the approach to Kellogg — at a time when "no comparable top-tier EMBA existed in Asia", so the two schools bet on their judgement that "Asia's market had a demand for a top EMBA". It was an early, important move in international collaborative education for the Business School (which had itself admitted its first MBA cohort in 1991, the year the University was founded).
• Structure: an 18-month part-time programme taught on the HKUST Clear Water Bay campus, delivered jointly by faculty from both schools, and leading to a single MBA degree awarded jointly by the two institutions (not a double degree).
• Ranking trajectory: per the HKUST 2022 announcement^※, the programme had been ranked world No. 1 in the Financial Times global EMBA ranking 11 times as of 2022, and sat in the world's top two from 2010 to 2023; in the 2025 ranking it fell to 4th place (see the year-by-year breakdown in 03 Rankings^※).

# 3.3 Executive Education (ExecEd): Custom Programmes for Companies

According to the Business School's Executive Education official page^※ and its Ranking and Accreditation page^※, the School also runs an Executive Education centre separate from the EMBA degree programme, offering non-degree, customised management training to corporate clients (in two formats: open-enrolment and customised in-company), serving middle and senior managers rather than individual students pursuing a degree. This division of labour — ACE for short engineering and technology courses, EMBA for a joint degree, ExecEd for corporate custom training — means HKUST's "continuing education" operates as separate units organised by school and by target audience, rather than under a single "School of Continuing Education" umbrella. This is one of the key differences from the models of other institutions discussed below.

# 3.4 A Comparative Note on Other Institutions

Note: Some Hong Kong institutions maintain large, financially self-accounting "schools of continuing / professional education" (for example, continuing-education colleges affiliated with older universities, offering associate degrees and articulation programmes). HKUST's continuing-education provision is comparatively concentrated at the professional / executive level (ACE, Business School executive education, ExecEd), rather than in large-scale associate-degree and foundation work. This article does not list the details of other institutions' continuing-education colleges; this is a neutral structural difference, not a judgement of merit. For the University's faculty-level learning spaces and physical infrastructure (such as the "third-generation" library's collaborative learning zones), see Learning Commons and Study Spaces^※; together the two complete the picture of HKUST's "non-traditional press plus decentralised continuing education" knowledge infrastructure.

---

# 4. At a Glance: Institutional Academic Series and Continuing-Education Units

For ease of horizontal comparison, the positioning, governing body and output form of each unit described above are summarised below:

---

# 5. Items Unverified / Not Pursued (per the mandatory checklist)

---

# Related Reading

• Library and Digital Education^※ — an overview of the Lee Shau Kee Library special collections, MOOC and generative-AI teaching policy hubs
• University Archives and Special Collections^※ — the specific holdings of rare books, old maps and special collections
• Learning Commons and the "Third-Generation" Library^※ — learning spaces and physical infrastructure such as 3D printing
• Blockchain Credentials^※ — Hong Kong's first Blockcerts e-diploma platform
• Hong Kong Tertiary Landscape Compared^※ — where HKUST sits among the eight UGC-funded universities by founding date and governance
• 03 Rankings^※ — the Kellogg-HKUST EMBA's year-by-year Financial Times ranking record