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Proposal submission

Thank you for your interest in submitting a book proposal to the University of London Press. Based at the School of Advanced Study in the University of London we publish monographs, edited collections, short-form monographs (20,000–50,000 words) and other scholarly books across the humanities disciplines.

Our books are predominantly published as open access editions without author charges, but we also publish books which cannot be made open access (for example, where the inclusion of significant amounts of third-party material prevents this). Where a book is published open access, we also publish hardback and paperback print editions of the title simultaneously which are available for sale.  

If you have funding available to support the open access edition of your book, or if open access publication is required by your funder, please do flag this in your proposal form.

We are pleased to consider new book proposals areas across all major humanities disciplines. You can find our blank proposal form at the link below – please submit your completed proposal, along with the requested sample material and your CV, to Emma Gallon, Books Manager at UoL Press (emma.gallon@sas.ac.uk).

University of London Press Book Proposal Form

We will confirm receipt of your proposal. It will then undergo an initial evaluation, in consultation with series editors and editorial advisory board members where relevant, to check that it fits with our publishing programme. We will contact you with the outcome of this initial evaluation and, if your proposal is something we would like to proceed with, we will advise you on the next steps, including requesting any additional material or revisions that may be recommended before it is sent for peer review.

If you are interested in submitting a new book series for consideration, please download the series proposal form at the link below and submit this to Emma Gallon, Books Manager (emma.gallon@sas.ac.uk) who will get in touch with you to discuss your proposal.   

University of London Press Series Proposal Form

Peer review

All University of London Press books go through the same rigorous editorial and peer review processes, whether published open access or not.

Book proposals

  1. Your proposal will initially be assessed by the UoL Press editorial team (and series editors/series advisory board members, where relevant). If it fits with our publishing programme and we decide to proceed with your proposal, we will send it out for peer review. We have a robust and supportive peer review process for all our books, and keep authors updated throughout the process.
    1. The review process is single blind, and proposals and sample material are sent to a minimum of two external peer reviewers.
    2. Reviewers are selected for their scholarly expertise and experience in the proposal’s field. Suggestions for reviewers may be made by UoL Press and/or series editors and series advisory board members if the book is intended for a specific series.
    3. If any suggestions for potential reviewers provided by authors are taken on, they will not make up the full review panel and at least one additional reviewer will be sought.
    4. It is expected that peer reviewers will declare any potential conflicts of interest to UoL Press prior to accepting a review invitation.
    5. Reviewers are asked to provide feedback on: the academic contribution the book would make to the field; the need for such a book and the likely readership; the methodologies/arguments presented; the coverage; the factual accuracy of the content; the structure and organisation; the clarity of presentation; any other points or issues; and their overall recommendation on the suitability of the proposal for publication.
    6. If the two reviewer reports differ considerably, or are uncertain in their recommendations, a third review will usually be sought.
  2. When peer reviews are in, these are anonymised and sent to the author/ editor. Usually we will ask for a response to the reviews, which is then considered alongside your proposal and the peer reviews by the UoL Press editorial team and series editors/series advisory board. A decision is made on whether to recommend the proposal for acceptance, to request revisions to the proposal (which may necessitate a further round of peer reviews of the revised material), or to decline the proposal for publication
  3. If your proposal is recommended for acceptance, it would then be taken to the next UoL Press Publishing Committee meeting. The Publishing Committee makes the final decision on whether to approve a project for publication by UoL Press. The core membership of the Publishing Committee consists of UoL Press staff in key roles (across editorial, sales and marketing and production) and senior academic and library staff within the School of Advanced Study. If your proposal is approved, you will then be offered a contract for your book.

Final manuscripts

We send all final manuscripts out for a final round of peer review once submitted, to ensure that you receive expert feedback on your book.

  1. Once your final book manuscript has been written and submitted, a clearance review of the full text will be carried out by one or more external peer reviewers (and/or the series editor, where relevant). Reviewers are invited to comment on: the quality and factual accuracy of the content; the organisation of the book; the clarity and quality of presentation; any issues or essential revisions that may be required; and their overall recommendation on whether the book is ready for production work to begin.
  2. The anonymised review feedback is communicated to the author and any final revisions to the manuscript requested and implemented. Following UoL Press approval, the manuscript is prepared for production by the editorial team.

Proposal and final manuscript reviewers are offered a selection of books published by UoL Press by way of compensation for completing reviews.

Publication process

Once your proposal has been approved by the Publishing Committee and you have received a contract from us, you will be sent a copy of our author pack. This pack contains all of the guidelines and information you will need when preparing and submitting your book manuscript.

During the writing process, please get in touch if you no longer think you will be able to make the submission date agreed in your contract. We are happy to agree to an extension and it is better to let me know about any delay in plenty of time so we can factor it into our publishing planning. Do make sure that you stick to the terms outlined in your contract (for example, regarding the number of images to be included in the text, the word-count, etc).

When ready, please submit your final manuscript and accompanying documents via email or an online file-sharing service to your editorial contact.

Manuscript preparation

Text

The text of your book should be supplied in Word with separate, clearly labelled files for each chapter and front/end matter item (for example, contents page, list of figures, bibliography).

Please ensure you have followed the style guide that you have been supplied with.

Illustrations

If your book has illustrations, these should be supplied as separate files labelled with the figure number, and not embedded within the chapters. Please indicate in the chapters where the illustrations should be placed and ensure that you don’t exceed your contractually agreed number of illustrations for the book.

Halftones (e.g., photographs, paintings, any images formed of a continuous tone/shading) should be at a resolution of at least 300dpi at the size they will appear in the book to ensure they are good enough quality for print. They should be supplied as TIF or JPEG files.

Line diagrams (e.g., graphs, maps, anything containing text, line drawings, music examples) should be supplied as either EPS or PDF files. If you must supply them as TIF files, they should be at a resolution of 1200dpi at the size they will appear in the book or greater.

Permissions

Authors/editors are responsible for clearing permissions to use any third-party material, including illustrations and text (lengthy quotations, excerpts from poetry etc.), and for covering any associated costs. A copy of the written permission from the copyright holder should be submitted with the manuscript. Please be aware that if your book is to be published open access, you will need to ensure that image permissions are cleared for open access use. If you have any questions about this, please do contact your editorial contact.

Cover

We would like to see your ideas for an image for the book cover, and your editorial contact will get in touch a few months before your manuscript is due for submission to request and discuss your suggestions. Design work on your book cover will begin prior to your book going into production and will be completed around 6 months before publication. You will receive a proof of the cover to review and comment on.

We can provide guidance and support you with image research, if required.

Production process

Once your final manuscript has been peer-reviewed, and checked and approved by our editorial team, it will be handed over for production.

The production process from this point takes approximately 6 months (although particularly complex projects can take longer than this):

  • A copyeditor is assigned to your manuscript, and the copyediting stage takes 7–12 weeks. The copyeditor will correct grammatical and spelling errors, put the manuscript into house style, check for sense where necessary, and check any missing references or other issues.
  • The copyedited manuscript will then be returned to authors/editors for review, and any queries raised by the copyeditor should be responded to then. Please note that this is not a proof stage – the manuscript will come back in Word, so any formatting in the manuscript will not be representative of the final layout. This will be your last chance to add any missing information before the pages are typeset.
  • The finalised copyedited manuscript will be sent to the typesetter to be set to a specific template. The first-page proofs, i.e., the first typeset version of the book, will be produced by the typesetter. These will be sent back to the authors/editors for review, along with a professional proofreader.
  • Corrections from the author/editor and proofreader will be collated and taken in by the typesetter and the second-page proofs will be produced.
  • The index is compiled after receipt of second proofs to ensure that pagination does not change. Your production contact will provide useful documentation on how to compile an index and advise along the way if any queries arise. Authors are responsible for compiling their own indexes because they are best placed to do it, being the expert on the subject they have written about.
  • The final files are produced, signed-off and sent to the printer as well as any other online distribution services (such as JSTOR) in order to reach a broad audience with your work.
  • Your book will be published around a month after receipt of the files by the printer. Your editorial contact will confirm the final publication date with you well in advance.

Marketing

You will be asked to complete a marketing form and submit it alongside your final manuscript. This will inform our marketing team’s promotion strategy for your book. We work closely with our authors to create tailored marketing plans for our books, which may include the following activities:

  • Soliciting reviews in academic journals
  • Promotion on social media
  • Press releases and interviews
  • Flyers and posters
  • A book launch and associated publicity
  • Detailed metadata to key channels for discoverability
  • The creation of Advanced Information sheets for our sales partners
  • Inclusion in our UoL Press catalogue
  • Promotion on relevant key mailing lists
  • (If published open access) Listing on key open access directories and platforms to ensure global dissemination and discoverability, including JSTOR, OAPEN and DOAB (Director of Open Access Books)

Open access policy

The University of London Press is a predominantly open access publisher, and we are committed to publishing as many books open access as possible. As well as going through the same rigorous editorial and peer review processes as our non-open access titles, our open access books benefit from the same high-quality standards of production – including copyediting, typesetting, proofreading and cover design – and marketing.

Gold open access

In agreement with the School of Advanced Study and its Institutes we are able to publish a number of books as open access ebooks at the same time as the publication of the print edition, without requiring payment of a book processing charge.

Where a book processing charge is payable (for example, where an author has specific funding to support the open access publication as part of a grant), the following fees apply:

  • Under 75,000 words: £5000 (plus VAT)
  • 75,000­­–125,000 words: £7000 (plus VAT)
  • Over 125,000 words: £8500 (plus VAT)

A book proposal must receive two positive peer reviews in order to be accepted for publication, regardless of whether funding is available to cover the book processing charge.

Under our Gold open access policy, we will make the final published version available on our own platforms and on a number of third-party platforms including JSTOR and OAPEN. Authors may upload the published version to their institutional repository and non-commercial subject repositories.

We also publish open access titles as PDF files on our own Humanities Digital Library platform, which forms part of the School of Advanced Study’s mission to support wider dissemination and greater access to the research we publish.

Green open access/Self-archiving

Under our Green open access policy, authors are permitted to archive their Accepted Manuscript in an institutional or subject repository. The Accepted Manuscript is the final manuscript following peer review and revision but prior toany copyediting or typesetting work carried out by UoL Press.

  • This policy applies to monographs, edited collections and individual book chapters.
  • An embargo period of 12 months from publication should be applied before archiving the Accepted Manuscript in a repository.
  • The final version published by UoL Press may not be archived.
  • It should be made clear that the archived Accepted Manuscript is not the final published version. Citation information for the published book should be included in the repository record, along with a link (ideally a DOI link) to the publication on the UoL Press website.
  • We recommend that a CC BY-NC-ND Creative Commons licence is applied (more on licensing below).
  • The Accepted Manuscript may not be uploaded to a commercial, for-profit platform.

The Green route to open access applies to books published as traditional closed access publications. Authors of books made immediately open access by UoL Press via the Gold route may archive the final published version to an institutional or subject repository on publication.

Copyright and licensing

Our open access publications are all published under a Creative Commons licence. Our recommended licence is CC BY-NC-ND, which allows others to download your work and share it with others as long as they credit your original publication, but they can’t change it in any way or use it commercially. However, we are able to agree to other Creative Commons licences (for example, if you need a different licence to meet a research funders’ requirements).

For non-open access books, authors generally also retain copyright and grant UoL Press an exclusive licence to publish the work in all print and digital formats.

When self-archiving the Accepted Manuscript for non-open access publications as per the Green route outlined above, we recommend that the licence you apply in CC BY-NC-ND.

Although it is preferable for any third-party material e.g. illustrations to be shared in your book under the same Creative Commons licence, if the copyright holder does not permit this it is possible to share the material under a more restrictive licence. The terms under which the third-party material is shared must be made clear in the caption/credit line that accompanies the material.

Open access projects

UoL Press is delighted to be part of Jisc’s ‘Open Access Community Framework’ pilot project, launched in May 2022. This innovative pilot project aims to support a diverse scholarly communication ecosystem, with university libraries directly pledging funding to support a range of open access publishing initiatives from smaller presses. UoL Press has successfully met its pledging target from universities listed below, which will support the publication of an additional 9 titles in our ‘New Historical Perspectives’ series, published in partnership with the Royal Historical Society and the Institute of Historical Research.

So far, libraries supporting the project and this new model of open access publishing include:

  • University of Birmingham
  • University of Bristol
  • University of Cambridge
  • Cardiff University
  • University of Exeter
  • University of Nottingham
  • University of Sheffield
  • University of St Andrews
  • University of Sussex
  • University of York

If you would like more information about the Jisc pilot or are interested in your library or institution supporting this, please contact Paula Kennedy (Head of Publishing) at paula.kennedy@sas.ac.uk

Additional resources

We understand that you may have further questions about open access publishing, and we are happy to answer these and provide you with any information required  . We have also included below a list of helpful resources and links which provide further explanation and guidance on publishing open access:

 

IPG logo
DOAB logo
ALPSP logo

 

 

 
 

 

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