UCL Press Books Editorial Policy

Accessibility

We’re committed to making our content available to all readers by prioritising accessibility from the commissioning stage through to publication.

We’ve put accessibility at the forefront of our mission through in-house training for our staff and in the guidelines we provide our authors and editors. We ensure that manuscripts are carefully formatted and have a logical reading structure that is easy to navigate. Alongside our print formats, we publish web-ready PDFs, which include extensive hyperlinking and bookmarking, and reflowable EPUBs enabled for magnification. The many ways in which we prioritise accessibility can be viewed in our Accessibility Statement.

AI

UCL Press acknowledges that Generative AI can be used responsibly for certain tasks such as language improvement, but we insist that all uses follow UCL’s general guidance on research integrity, authorship, accountability and disclosure. We ask authors to confirm that they’ve read our AI Policy and, if they’ve used Gen AI in their research, to submit an AI disclosure form. We also provide peer reviewers with guidance on how Gen AI can and cannot be used in the review process.

Allocation of Funding

UCL staff

UCL Press covers the publication costs of all monographs and edited volumes authored or edited by at least one UCL member of staff.

Book series

UCL Press covers the publication costs of books published in series that have at least one series editor based at UCL.

Non-UCL staff

Monographs and edited volumes that aren’t authored or edited by at least one UCL member of staff, and that aren’t publishing in a book series edited by at least one UCL member of staff, must cover their own publication costs. Our current BPC rates are listed here.

Waiver scheme

UCL Press covers the publication costs of up to five books in each financial year that aren’t authored or edited by at least one UCL member of staff and won’t be publishing in a series edited by at least one UCL member of staff. The commissioning editors nominate books for the waiver scheme according to the agreed criteria.

Authorship

Acknowledging authorship

As agreed in our head contracts, the authorship of lead authors and editors is prominently displayed on the front cover and the copyright page of all books, as well as on the book’s product page on our website and in any marketing materials related to the book.

Retained rights

UCL Press requests from its book authors and editors the exclusive right to be referred to as the first publisher of the book for the legal term of copyright. Authors and editors also grant us permission to publish the book in accordance with the terms of their chosen Creative Commons licence. All other rights are retained by the author/s and editor/s.

Citation and Plagiarism

The work of others should always be acknowledged in line with our Author Guidelines, which we provide to all authors and editors upon awarding a contract. Authors must be very clear on which work is their own and which work is the intellectual property of others.

Author misconduct

If UCL Press suspects misconduct, we’ll carry out an investigation following the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). If, after investigation, we remain concerned that misconduct has occurred, we’ll contact the author with the evidence and give them the opportunity to respond. If the author fails to respond, or if they provide an unsatisfactory explanation, we’ll escalate the matter by contacting the author’s institution to request a formal investigation.

Pre-publication sharing

As outlined in the head contracts, authors who wish to share any aspect of their manuscript prior to publication must request permission to do so from their commissioning editor. The commissioning editor will, on a case-by-case basis, weigh up the potential benefits and disadvantages of the pre-publication request. They’ll consider factors such as the length of the content to be pre-published, where it’ll be pre-published and the extent to which the content will be revised. They’ll inform the author of their decision.

Post-publication corrections

Authors who wish to make corrections post-publication must complete a corrections request form, which will be considered by the UCL Press production team in line with our corrections policy. If the corrections meet the threshold outlined in the policy, the team will discuss the process with the author. If the corrections don’t meet the threshold, the production team will explain to the author why the corrections cannot be made.

Banned Language and Anonymous Authorship

UCL Press follows the Committee on Publication Ethics’ guidance on the use of specific terminology and the anonymisation of authorship. Authors and editors are best placed to determine the appropriate language to be used in their respective fields in order to ensure that research is communicated appropriately. If an author or editor cannot be named, as doing so might compromise their safety, anonymising the author or agreeing to the use of a pseudonym is permissible.

Book Titles

We encourage authors and editors to select book titles that are descriptive so that readers know exactly what the book is about. Titles should include keywords in the main title and subtitle to aid discoverability in Google and library catalogues such as UCL Discovery.

Commissioning Process and Peer Review

The commissioning editors evaluate and develop book proposals in line with UCL Press’ Commissioning Strategy. They send the proposal and any sample material – or the full manuscript if it’s available – to at least two experts in the field for assessment. Upon receipt of the reviews, the commissioning editors invite the lead author/s or editor/s to respond to the comments. The commissioning editors then present the proposal, the reviews and the response to the Monographs Editorial Board and a contract decision is made. A proposal can be declined by UCL Press at any point in the consideration process.

UCL Press sends manuscripts of contracted books for peer review before the project proceeds to the production stage. The commissioning editor of the project asks the lead author/s or editor/s to comment on any revisions they’ve suggested and any revisions suggested by the reviewer. A revisions plan is then agreed.

In recognition of the work involved in reviewing a proposal or manuscript, we offer all reviewers a fee. The fee is determined by the amount of material to be reviewed and the required turnaround time.

Jurisdictional Claims and Impartiality

UCL Press takes a neutral position with regard to territorial disputes and jurisdictional claims in its publications, including in maps and institutional affiliations. We include a disclaimer on the copyright page of all books stating that the opinions contained within the publication are solely those of the author/s and not of UCL Press.

Open Access

UCL Press is a fully open access publisher, which means that our default position is to publish all books as free-to-download PDFs at the point of publication. As well as the free version, we also sell print copies for those who prefer to read a hard copy. To find out about funding options for authors to publish their books open access with UCL Press, please see section above on ‘Allocation of Funding’.

Research Ethics

Authors whose research involves human participants must demonstrate at the proposal stage that they’ve followed the ethics approval process at their institution. If the research didn’t meet the institution’s requirement for formal approval, or if the author isn’t attached to an institution, the author must provide a statement outlining how their research was undertaken according to accepted ethical standards.