Publishing

• Ask for recommendations: look for conferences recommended to you by your colleagues or your supervisor
• Consider the prestige of the sponsor or publisher: look for conferences sponsored by scholarly or professional societies or associations. Do double check that they are indeed connected to the conference
• Establish the credibility of the conference organiser: check who they are and their affiliation, for example by considering if their contact details are consistent with where they pertain to work or who they claim to represent
• Be wary of very generic conferences that combine many fields of research. Quality conferences usually cover a particular discipline, subject area or niche topic.
• Review outputs from past conferences:  conferences can be annually or regularly held events. Check the outputs from previous conferences and the prestige of the authors or the presenters. Conference papers from quality conferences may be indexed in library databases such as Web of Science and IEEE Xplore, etc.  In the case of a one-off conference, have a look at who the advertised plenary speakers are as an indication of quality.
• Be wary of unsolicited invitations: quality conferences rarely solicit papers directly from individuals. Instead, join appropriate academic networks and look for calls for conference submissions sent to the academic community.
• Check if there is a review process for submissions: quality conferences usually receive a large number of submissions, not all of which will be accepted. Be wary of promises of instant, automatic acceptance as this may indicate no quality control on the content of the conference. In computer science, there is a culture of publishing in conferences as a main dissemination route for research outcomes. Conference paper submissions in computer science are therefore often peer reviewed.
• Establish the process for publication of papers: conferences often produce proceedings containing all or selected papers from the conference. Check if publication of the proceedings is intended and what you can expect in terms of editorial processes.  If there is a promise to publish in a journal or proceedings, check the quality of the journal in advance of submitting to the conference.

If you are planning for a monograph, you will have to identify a publishing house that is most relevant to your research field. Some academic publishers have a diverse portfolio and will publish books in many disciplines, other publishers specialise in specific fields. A fundamental choice is whether you are aiming at a small expert audience or at a wider cross-disciplinary or even non-academic audience. It may be smart to identify a book series with a respected editorial board – this may help you to maximise the impact in your field.

When choosing a publishing house, you could take the following factors into account:

• Academic weight: Does the publishing house or book series offer a peer review process? This may or may not be essential for your purposes (e.g. for future career progression or submission to the REF).
• Prestige: Are you looking for a prestigious publisher where competition may be greater, or a younger press that may focus on offering a good personal service and where acceptance may be less competitive?
• Speed: Will the publisher be able to meet your deadlines, if any, depending on personal requirements or those of your funder or employer?
• Added value: Does the publishing house offer services such as: design and layout of your monograph (including designing the cover), indexing, copy-editing and proof-reading, good review coverage, and a wide and effective promotion of your monograph?
• Pricing policy: How does the (likely) price the publishing house will sell your monograph for, compare to similar books on the target market? Does this help you to achieve your aims and reach your intended audience?

Please be aware that some publishers operate an exploitative business model by charging publication fees without providing proper editorial and publishing services; this is sometimes referred to as ‘predatory publishing’. These publishers often get directly in touch with you with an unsolicited offer that sounds too good to be true. Often they only do the minimal peer review process, if any at all, and sometimes even guarantee acceptance. These publishers only provide a minimum amount of services, excluding functions such as design, copy-editing, advertising and promoting your monograph. Some publishers may also ask you for a fee, which may not always be clear upfront. Finally, you may be required to sign a copyright agreement in which you sign over all rights to your work. 

Just as for journal articles, it is possible to publish a monograph via Open Access. This may require an author fee. Some publishers will make an electronic Open Access version of your monograph available online whilst also selling hard or paperbacks via print-on-demand. There are many other business models.

Publishing Open Access monographs is a new phenomenon which has so far been received with caution by the AHSS academic community. Initial findings suggest that an Open Access monograph may get more downloads than pay-to-view digital copies, and may open up a wider readership from a broader range of countries. Making a monograph available via Open Access could even increase print sales. However royalties are likely to be reduced and the usually guaranteed ‘long tail’ of print monograph sales is likely to be eroded. Monographs are exempt from REF 2021 open access requirements, so the decision on this rests with the author and their institution.

Publishers offering Open Access monograph publishing are, amongst others:

• Commercial University presses, such as Cambridge University Press and Manchester University Press
• Open Access (‘new’) University presses – these publish journals and monographs irrespective of institutional affiliation and after scrutiny by an editorial board, such as UCL Press, White Rose University Press and University of Westminster Press
• Open Access monograph publishers, of which Open Book Publishers and Ubiquity Press are probably the best-known examples
• Commercial publishers with an Open Access option, such as Palgrave Open, Brill Open, Springer Open and Routledge Books Open Access

If you are unsure about the credibility of an Open Access publisher you can check:

• Whether their monographs are included in the OAPEN library
• Whether their monographs are included in the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB)
• Whether they are a member of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA)

These publishers are meeting strict criteria to show their commitment to quality assurance, e.g. they have a proper peer review process. For more information see:
E. Collins, C. Milloy and G. Stone, ‘Guide to Open Access Monograph Publishing for Arts, Humanities and Social Science Researchers’ (2015): http://dx.doi.org/10.5920/oapen-uk/oaguide

Book chapters – ‘Green’ Open Access

If you are contributing a book chapter to an edited work, it is increasingly likely that you will be permitted to archive it in SHURA.   For example, publishers such as ACM digital library, Bloomsbury, Cambridge University Press, Routledge and Sage now allow the upload of manuscripts of book chapters (often with some restrictions).  To find out what is allowed by your publisher, you can check the information about Open Access provided on your publisher’s web pages or Cambridge University maintain a list of publisher policies on their page about Making book chapters available in repositories.

When depositing a book chapter on SHURA, where possible attach the accepted manuscript to the record.  The SHURA team will check your publisher’s policy and contact you if necessary.