Social Sciences Publishing House is a professional institution belonged to Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences and established according Decision no. 01/VH-QĐ in January 16th 1967 by Minister of Culture Ministry; and is mentioned in the Decree no.109/NĐ-TTg in December 26th 2012 by Prime Minister on professional institutions of Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences.
The functionality of the publishing house is to publish, print and issue products which are results of social and scientific researches and technology development of Vietnam and the world as references for Government and State. Vietnam management will make strategies and policies for national growth while these references will be used for researches and publishing knowledge as a way to improve their awareness.
Over the past 60 years, Social Sciences Publishing House has always successfully completed their responsibilities and duties. They have followed the political orientation and focused on scientific quality in each publish as the target to achieve the position, image and its reputation. Up to now, the publishing house has issued more than 3000 publications with good quality, nice package, and meets political demand of State and readers. The number of publications was only 230 in the period of 1952 to 1966, up to 452 in the period of 1967 to 1986, and reached 2536 in the period of 1987 to 2012. Over the period, the publishing house has more than 1200 since 2003. In general, publications are mostly research books (60%) with diversified topics which covered most of faculties of social sciences and humanity.
Publications are directly linked with duties on scientific theories and practice. They have provided the methodology and theories for making policies and building development pathway of State and Communist Party. On the other hands, these publications have contributed to the fight backward and hostile thoughts as well as built the new ideology and new culture served for revolution. There is a growing trend of publications on Philosophy, Psychology, Law, Economics, Society Studies, Geography and Humanities, Family and Women, Human … Some of particular examples are Renovation in thinking style; Knowledge of the micro – world; The historical fate of socialism; History of Vietnam economy; 5 years after WTO’s participation of Vietnam…
Besides, dictionaries and research books of Social Sciences Publishing House have accounted 30% of total numbers of books, including: dictionary for one, two and three types of language; professional dictionary; dictionary which is used for explaining a work. The publishing house also has referencing books for some faculties related to society and humanity. They are useful tools of researchers and have contributed to the creation of research works such as: Common Dictionary for Spelling; English – Vietnamese Dictionary; Russian – French – Vietnamese Jargon Dictionary, Russian – English – French Jargon Dictionary; Tables for looking up Nom; Stories about literature; Khmer – Vietnamese Dictionary…
Publishing house has issued some other popular types of book which are about sciences and humanity and for public. These publications play an important role in the publishing function of the publishing house. For example, publications on Ethnography gave a systematic overview about minority ethnics in Vietnam while books on archeology have clarified the cultural and civilized properties of Viet people and other ethnics. Historic publications have studied on the achievements after the fight for national protection as lessons for national defense and socialism building. Publications on philological sciences/ literature sciences (philology science) are to display the research results and introduce valuable heritage of forefather; to do research on literature history; to introduce famous names of the national culture; to collect and promote Vietnamese folklore. There are another types of publication such as: Research books on fundamental theories of literature and folklore; Chinese – Nom books and those explored the Chinese – Nom library; language books also contributed to maintain the purity of Vietnamese; and some have released the research results on language of minority ethnics.
Publications which studied on international issues are diversified with various topics as global issues, groups, regions and countries. They basically focus on following contents: Firstly, to reflect all or each fields as culture, economy, politics so on. The purpose is to provide the information about country, human and experiences during the country building progress. Secondly, to reflect the political, economic and cultural relationship between Vietnam and other countries, areas then figure out the strengths and weaknesses of each side. This will enhance the mutual benefits between two sides as a way to improve the relationship based on the respect for each other’s independence. There are many other research works which have studied on specific areas as Europe, America, North East Asia, Africa – Middle East, India and South West Asia… Basically, most of countries, which have relationship with Vietnam, are studied in books, at least in some fields of social life. Some of examples are World Economics and Politics (annual report); South East Asia on the development; Russia and Eastern Europe at the entry of the 21st century; North America today: major trends; Magical Asian economies …
One of the biggest achievements of Social Sciences Publishing House is to publish big and valuable books which have great meaning of thoughts and sciences over the 60 years: Poems of Ly - Tran dynasty, Literature – History of Le Dynasty, The collection of history of Great Viet (Dai Viet) (4 volumes), Records of Dai Nam (38 volumes), Collection of Vietnamese Literature – the 10th century to 1945 (42 volumes), Works achieved Ho Chi Minh award (22 volumes)... The publishing house has edited and published The Collection of Vietnamese Literature (52 volumes) in 20 years. Afterwards, it was the publish of The collection of Vietnamese folklores and The collection of folklore of Vietnamese minority ethnics (from Muc Nam Quan to Ca Mau) and The historic collection of Tay Nguyen. They have determined the meaning and significance of these works in the social life. Besides, the publishing house has collected and republished many works which were awarded the Hochiminh Award on social sciences and humanity. This is not only an honor for scientific works but also for authors, for VASS and for the Social Sciences Publishing House.
Publications of Social Sciences Publishing House are results of research works with high quality, done by group or individuals and filtered from projects at State and Ministry level across Vietnam.
Recently, the publishing house has gradually adjusted its operation in a positive way. They change the working style and apply technology and information in management for efficiency improvement. The publishing process is always added and completed to be suitable with practice such as evaluation works, edition, design, or cover display… The aim is to ensure that the correct concept is issued with nice display and design while publishing time is shortened. Also, publications are gradually adjusted by international standards.
With the effort of all staff, the publishing house has an increasing trend in the number of publications together with quality. In order to attract more social human resource for publishing activities, the publishing house has expanded the publishing collaboration with more partners out of VASS. This is a hard problem because it requires to follow the regulations of Publishing Law, and to compete with the market mechanism. However, the results showed that publications of publishing house have followed the right way of political thoughts of Communist Party with a good concept of sciences and receiving public’s high evaluation and welcome.
As a way of appreciating achievements obtained during 60 years, State and Communist Party have issued many valuable awards for Social Sciences Publishing House such as: 3rd class Independent Order (2011); 1st class Labor order (1992); Certification of Prime Minister (2007, 2011); Competitiveness Award (2009, 2010, 2011) and Well Performance Award (2003 - 2011) of Director of VASS, Well Performance Award from Ministry of Culture and Information, Ministry of Information and Communication of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (1995, 1999 - 2010); and 26 awards fir Vietnamese Book of Vietnamese Publishing Association (2007 - 2012); Awards from the Board of Management of the campaign for literature, art, articles composition about learning and following Hochiminh’s example.
However, the efficiency of publish activities are low and lack of professional while the scale is small and limitation of working environment, equipment, financial sources , and quality of human resources, especially in comparison with the status and position of Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences in the period of strengthening the national industrialization and modernization.
