Scholarly publishing is changing. What does it mean for you?

For years, scholarly work was published primarily by university presses. Today, the situation is quite different. A small number of large commercial publishers dominate the market—Taylor and Francis, Wiley-Blackwell, Springer, Sage, and Elsevier are the biggest—and their market share is likely to grow further. Commercial presses are profit-making enterprises, and to maximize profits they often cut costs by reducing the range of services they provide, leaving authors to do more of the work of preparing, formatting, and proofreading manuscripts. In turn, most university presses have also cut costs to remain in the market, offering fewer and fewer services.

What does this mean for you, the author? It means more work. Depending on the publisher, you may be asked to format your reference list and other elements of your paper yourself, according to the publisher’s style. If you are publishing in English and English is not your native language, you may be asked to hire someone at your own expense to read your paper and correct your English. Your typeset page proofs will likely not be proofread by a professional proofreader; instead, you yourself will be the sole proofreader. 

The best website for keeping up with the latest in scholarly publishing is the Scholarly Kitchen.

A final word: Authors should be wary of so-called predatory publishers. Predatory publishers take advantage of authors desperate for publication. They charge a fee for publishing a paper and promise—often falsely—quick publication, rigorous peer review, and the like. For more, see the guide prepared by Iowa State University: http://instr.iastate.libguides.com/c.php?g=49622&p=319624.