Open Book Publishers

Homepage - More on OBP - Information for New Authors Information for New Authors <p> </p> <ul> </ul> <p> </p> Benefits of publishing with us<br> <br> <br> OBP provides permanent and free access to our books for readers with no publication fees for the authors, and the majority of our titles are published under the most flexible reuse standard – the CC BY license. For more information about copyright, licensing and other issues related to Open Access publishing, see our Open Access Guide for Academics. <br> All our titles are published simultaneously in several free digital editions (downloadable PDF, PDF Reader, HTML and XML format) that can be read via our website, downloaded, reused or embedded anywhere, as well as in high-quality, affordably priced paperback, hardback and ebook editions (EPUB and MOBI). <br> Our authors range from early-career academics to eminent scholars such as Noam Chomsky and Amartya Sen. We offer authors full copyright, faster publishing times, flexibility to amend and update their work and a greater number of readers. We make publication decisions based on academic merit rather than commercial considerations, and all our books undergo a rigorous peer review and editorial process. <p>Ask an OBP author. If you’ve read the information on this page and want to find out more about what it’s like to publish with us, email Professor Caroline Warman (caroline.warman@Jesus.ox.ac.uk), author of the forthcoming The Atheist's Bible: Diderot's ‘Éléments de physiologie’ and translator of Denis Diderot 'Rameau's Nephew' – 'Le Neveu de Rameau': A Multi-Media Bilingual Edition(2nd ed., 2016) and Tolerance: The Beacon of the Enlightenment (2016).</p> <ul> <li>Book Proposal Form</li> <li>Authors' Guide</li> <li>Letter from our Managing Editor<br> </li> </ul> No Book Processing Charges for authors<br> As a non-profit, academic-led Open Access publisher our priority is to ensure that high-quality academic books are freely available to readers worldwide. We do not require authors to pay for publication. We encourage those who are able to apply for grants from their university and elsewhere in order to defray the costs of publication, but the decision about whether or not to publish a book depends entirely on the outcome of our peer review process. Authors without any funding support regularly publish with us. <br> <br> Depending on a number of factors including, for example, the length of the manuscript and number of images, it typically costs us £5,000 to produce and market a book. We have ensured that we do not need to charge individual authors by developing a sustainable mixed model of funding, including revenue from the sale of affordably priced digital and paper copies alongside our Open Access editions. our innovative and long-standing Library Membership Programme. and the grant funding that some authors are able to source to support the publication of their books. We provide information on possible sources of publishing grants for Open Access books and support our authors throughout the application process. For more information on available grants and how to apply, see our Authors' Guide. Research assessment, reviews and quality standards All books published by OBP can be submitted for university research assessments. In the UK, our books have been submitted for the UK REF assessment exercise, and UKRI have indicated that for the REF-after-REF 2021, there is likely to be an Open Access mandate for monographs, chapters and edited collections. <br> Our books are regularly reviewed in publications, academic journals and scholarly blogs including The Times Literary Supplement, Times Higher Education, Essays in Criticism, Modern Language Review, Choice Review, Romanticism, The Year’s Work in English Studies / The Year’s Work in Critical and Cultural Theory, Medieval Aevum, The English Historical Review, International Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Journal of European Studies, Slavic and East European Journal and Counterfire and are often awarded book prizes. You can find links to reviews and awards on the individual title pages on our website, and a list of our prize-winning books can be found here.<br> <br> OBP is eligible to receive European Commission's publication grants for research funded within the FP7 and Horizon 2020 frameworks, and we are an approved member of OASPA, the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association. We are compliant with the open access requirements of OAPEN, the European Research Council, The Wellcome Trust, the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) and the Norwegian Register for Scientific Journals, Series and Publishers. Our titles are listed in the Directory of Open Access Books and, through WorldReader, our books are accessed in the developing world on e-readers and mobile phones. Open Access: more readers, greater impact Our books are currently read by an average of 400 readers per month per title worldwide. Our books are uploaded on our website and a number of platforms, such as Google Books, OAPEN, the DOAB, Open Edition, and textbooks platforms such as Merlot II. They are also easy to embed on personal websites, blogs and social networking sites. Allowing free access to your research means that more people will be able to engage with your ideas around the world, and provides more opportunity for the citation of your work. It also makes various forms of reuse easier, such as translation: our titles that have been translated include Economic Fables by Ariel Rubinstein, Tolerance ed. by Caroline Warman, and The Scientific Revolution Revisited by Mikuláš Teich. <br> <br> Your book will never go out of print, as all books are available via Print on Demand as well as being freely available online. Universities and research libraries worldwide subscribe to our Library Membership Programme, so your book will be listed in the catalogues of over 160 major university libraries worldwide (and counting). The readership statistics of each title are updated daily and displayed on our website along with a readership map that shows the international distribution of readers. We have also developed an Open Source reporting system for authors which allows them to access all metrics relating to their books. For more details about how we collect our readership statistics, click here. Find out more about how we collect our readership statistics, and read our blog post to see how we share this information for every title we publish. <br> <br> <p> </p> Innovative modes of publication At Open Book we welcome proposals that engage with knowledge in new ways, and we are willing to help individuals and institutions develop new ways of disseminating research to better inform and interact with readers and researchers. For example, our award-winning Denis Diderot 'Rameau’s Nephew' – 'Le Neveu de Rameau': A Multi-Media Bilingual Edition incorporates specially-recorded musical pieces into the body of the text, making Diderot’s work uniquely accessible and engaging for a general audience. one of our books on oral literature, Storytelling in Northern Zambia, allows readers not just to access the author's opinions on the topic, but also to listen and watch the storytellers directly. Many of our titles also provide additional digital resources that further enrich the research presented in the book. In this way readers can verify and participate in the academic discussion — and scholars can make further use of the primary material in their academic research. Read more about our innovative publications and see some examples here.<br> Your work, your copyrightAll our titles are published using Creative Commons licences. These licences mean that you are in full control of your own copyright, and can choose how your work is used by other people. We recommend Creative Commons Attribution licences (CC BY) which allows others to copy, distribute, display and perform your copyrighted work, but ensures that they must give you full credit. All the same rules of plagiarism and citation apply to works under this licence. Details of the alternative Creative Commons licences available can be found here (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/). After publication you will be able to embed the free-to-read edition of your work on your website, social media page, blog and any other digital platform. High-quality editions We use print-on-demand technology to provide attractive paperback and hardback editions of each monograph at affordable prices. This also means that it is easier to update and revise your book. All our books are printed by Lightning Source—one of the leading PoD companies widely used by university presses—and offer a high-quality and beautifully-designed final product. Our titles are also published in ebook format (EPUB and MOBI) and, of course, in multiple Open Access formats (PDF, HTML and XML). All our editions come from the same master file and they are all released on the same date: no embargo period. As we are a non-profit publisher, any revenue we generate from sales of print and digital editions goes back into publishing more high-quality monographs. <br> <p> </p> Author support and speedy service OBP offers careful evaluation of any proposal or sample material, and constructive feedback and advice throughout the process of publication. If you would like, we will consult you on every aspect of your book, from the cover design to the back page blurb. As we are a small and dedicated team, we are also able to offer a nuch speedier service than many academic book publishers. We aim to make publishing decisions within three months of receipt of the full MS, and we aim to conclude the publication process within three months of receiving the final MS. This can be enormously beneficial if you are applying for grants or jobs—your book will be in the public arena sooner. It is also beneficial for authors submitting their book for research assessment exercises. <p> </p> Book Submission <p>OBP publishes monographs and textbooks in any area of the Humanities and Social Sciences and are also accepting book proposals in science, mathematics, and medicine. We do not publish doctoral dissertations. Our standard is at least as high as that of the most prestigious academic presses. To ensure that only submissions of the highest quality are published, generally we employ the referee system described below. However our aim is to identify the best, or develop what can become the best, in discussion with the author and advisers, not just to follow a mechanistic procedure. So we encourage authors of quality manuscripts who may be inexperienced to get in contact with us to discuss their work.</p> <p>OBP invites prospective authors to submit their complete, or near-complete, manuscript and book proposal via email (a.tosi@openbookpublishers.com), using the submission form which is available here. </p> <p>A submission will only be considered where the manuscript has not been offered for publication elsewhere. There is no word limit or limit in the number of images included in our books, and other materials, including additional text, visual images (static and moving), and audio, can be added online if they would enhance the work.</p> <p> </p> The Review Process <p>Initial review: All submissions are first considered by the Managing Editor to determine if they are suitable, consulting others, including members of the Editorial Board, as necessary.</p> <p>Assignment: Having determined suitability, the Managing Director informs the Board of Directors and is responsible for sending the complete, or near-complete, manuscript to at least two recognized experts for review.</p> <p>Peer review: Referees are asked to consider the following: (1) overall quality. (2) originality (its contribution to the field). (3) academic standards. and (4) success of synthesis between areas for those submissions purporting to be interdisciplinary. Referees will recommend one of the following options: (1) accept outright for immediate publication. (2) accept subject to minor modification. (3) accept subject to major modification. (4) reject outright. Referees are asked to submit reports within 2-3 months.<br> </p> <p>Revision: Authors will be sent anonymised copies of referee comments. Authors are responsible for considering the suggestions and, if they agree, ensuring that necessary amendments are carried out.</p> <p>Reconsideration: Revised manuscripts may be returned to Referees or may be assessed solely by the Managing Director (having reference to the review and recommendations by the referees).</p> <p>Recommendation: Based on referee reports and her own assessment, the Managing Director will make a recommendation to the Board of Directors, which has final responsibility for each decision on each submission. </p> <p> </p> The Publication Process <p>Proof-reading by authors: Once your submission has been accepted, we ask for a fully proof-read copy of your work, with an index and bibliography. We prefer the MHRA style of citation (we provide our style guide in our information package for authors). Alternatively at the author's request OBP will arrange for additional professional proof-reading and copy-editing services if needed.</p> <p>Proof-reading by OBP: Once you submit your final manuscript we will check it for consistency and proof-read it in-house. We will then send you a first set of proofs in Word with our comments and corrections highlighted in the text using track-changes. This is the last opportunity for authors to make minor changes in the text.</p> <p>Typesetting: After last corrections have been approved we typeset the manuscript and send you final proofs in PDF format. No major changes can be made at this stage in order not to disrupt the page layout. </p> Publication: We usually publish the title within a month (and no later than 6 months) of receiving approved final proofs from authors. Your book will be available simultaneously in the free-to-read edition, digital (downloadable) and printed editions. Our titles are available to purchase from our website and from all major retailers (such as Amazon), book distributors and libraries.<br> Marketing and publicityAll OBP books undergo a targeted marketing campaign: we send review copies to leading and subject-specific journals, and at the time of publication, each book is promoted extensively through email notices to libraries and personalized messages to academics. Every new title features prominently on our website and is marketed via our social media channels. We also encourage you to play an active role in promoting your work: Open Book Publishers has over 10,000 combined followers on Twitter and Facebook, and we offer our authors the chance to write a blog or to post podcasts and videos for this audience. Social media is one of our most effective marketing tools, and this is an engaging and interactive way for you to reach a large number of potential readers. Wide distribution OBP titles are available via Print-on-Demand (meaning they are never out of print) and can be ordered from any country. They are available through the major retail outlets and distribution channels (including Amazon, Apple iBook store, Google Play, Barnes &amp. Noble, Bertram Books, Blackwells, CNKI Beijing, EBSCO, JSTOR and YBP - click here to find more information about our distribution channels) as well as from our own website. Over 170 research libraries acquire all our titles through our Library Membership Programme, and OBP provide MARC records for Member libraries to list our books in their catalogues, as well as automatic metadata distribution to Crossref and publication metadata to wholesale and eBook distributors.<br> Preservation of your work OBP titles are preserved in the UK legal deposit libraries at the British Library, OpenEdition, Google Books and the Internet Archive. All our titles are available through Google Books, which itself is committed to long term preservation of their digital editions. We have also partnered with OpenEdition—a resource for Open Access books serving individuals and libraries—which ensures preservation of all the titles in their catalogue, and we upload digital editions of titles to the British Library where our content is also stored in perpetuity. The html editions of all our titles, together with any web-links embedded into the publication, are uploaded to the Internet Archive's WayBack Machine at the time of publication. Authors are free to self-archive digital editions as they see fit, and we particularly encourage authors to use institutional repositories for this purpose. We are also happy to submit published editions of works to specific repositories as may be required or mandated by funding bodies and research organisations. Because our books are Open Access and under Creative Commons licences they will be available to all in the future through the above organizations and elsewhere, even if OBP should cease to exist. OBP also allocate DOIs to all our books, at both book and chapter level.<p> </p> <b>Authors' Guide</b> <br> Click here to download the OBP authors' guide <b>Images and Audio/Video Material</b> <br> Read more about clearing copyright for images, audio and video files embedded in your work