Publish a book

UCL Press welcomes proposals for monographs, short monographs, edited volumes, and textbooks across all major disciplines in the Arts and Humanities, Social Sciences and Sciences.

• We are happy to consider proposals for books and book series. Please see our list of current series here.
• If you would like to publish your book with us, follow our author guidelines
• Please email your proposal together with any sample material as Word documents to the commissioning editor for your subject.
• We ask for sole consideration of the project while it is under review.

Please address any questions to the relevant Commissioning Editor:

• Dr Chris Penfold, at c.penfold@ucl.ac.uk (All subjects excluding education)
• Pat Gordon Smith, at p.gordon-smith@ucl.ac.uk (Education and related subjects)

Documents:

• Series proposal form (.docx)
• Book proposal form (.docx)
• Guidelines for authors (.pdf)

We are committed to rigorous peer review at proposal and typescript stages. The process is as follows:

Once the Commissioning Editor is confident that your proposal is complete and fits the scope of our publishing, it is reviewed by UCL Press’s Executive Editorial Board, which comprises senior academics, senior UCL Library management, and UCL Press representatives. If the project qualifies for further consideration, your proposal (or full manuscript if available) is sent to at least two reviewers. Authors are free to suggest reviewers on the proposal form, but the Commissioning Editor may not use these suggestions.

The reviews are presented to the Board. If they are positive, the Board will likely recommend proceeding to the contract stage. Publication will be subject to a further review of the full manuscript if it was not available at the time of the initial review.

If the reviews are negative, or the reviewers have conflicting opinions, the Board will discuss how to proceed. You may be invited to revise the proposal or manuscript in light of the comments, and the revised material will be reviewed again.

Your editor will pass on the readers’ comments as soon as they are available (generally within 6 to 8 weeks). You will then be invited to respond to the reports where appropriate and to amend your proposal if necessary.

If the academic criteria have been met and your proposal is accepted, you will receive a contract.

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

Once your book has been contracted, and throughout the writing process, your Editor will keep in touch about your progress and answer any questions you have. You will be offered professional copyediting, proofreading, typesetting and cover design as part of the production process. Although we aim to provide a six-month production schedule from submission of the post-reviewed manuscript to publication, edited volumes and more complex books may need a longer production schedule.

Please see our author guidelines for information on the publishing process, including submission guidelines, how to prepare artwork, copyright, house style and indexing. Once your final manuscript has been submitted, the Managing Editor will be in touch with you to outline the schedule and next steps. The Managing Editor oversees the copyediting, proofreading and typesetting, as well as prepare the files for print and online publication, and will be your main contact during the production phase. Our aim is to produce titles to the highest production and editorial standards to agreed schedules, and we look forward to collaborating with you on this.

Our books are published using Creative Commons licences, and it is the author’s decision which licence to use, with guidance from the Commissioning Editor.

Creative Commons licences determine how open access content can be reused, and each licence permits the content to be reused in different ways. Instead of transferring rights to the publisher, an author allows the publisher to release the content under their preferred non-exclusive Creative Commons licence, which in turn grants users the right to reuse the content within the terms of that licence. It is important to remember that Creative Commons licences do not replace copyright but are in addition to it: they empower authors to decide how others may use their content beyond the fair dealing argument of copyright law. The most common licences are:

• CC BY: Allows others to redistribute, edit and build upon the content, even commercially, as long as the original author is credited.
• CC BY-SA: Allows others to redistribute, edit and build upon the content, even commercially, as long as the original author is credited and the new content is licensed under identical terms as the original content.
• CC BY-ND: Allows others to redistribute the content, even commercially, as long as the original author is credited. If the material is modified, it cannot be distributed.
• CC BY-NC: Allows others to redistribute, edit and build upon the content, but not commercially. The original author must be credited.
• CC BY-NC-ND: Allows others to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format, but not commercially. If the material is modified, it cannot be distributed. The original author must be credited.

Although authors are free to combine the licences to suit their needs – CC BY-NC-SA is also available – a clear preference for the CC BY licence has emerged in recent years. In keeping with the spirit of open access, CC BY fully realises the potential of open publishing to transform content into an effective tool for education and research: the less restrictive the licence, the more widely and flexibly the content can be redistributed and reused. For this reason, CC BY is promoted as the licence of choice by funding bodies including the Wellcome Trust and RCUK.

For more information about Creative Commons licences for Humanities and Social Science authors, click here. 

Our marketing team work hard to ensure that your book reaches as much of the target audience as possible. We promote every book to libraries, academics and bookshops using a variety of tried and trusted methods.

Even before your book is published, the marketing team begin to work to make your book more visible and discoverable. Ways that we do this include:

• Feeding comprehensive information to our sales agents, distribution partners and trade customers
• Creating advanced information for our trade partners
• Including your book in key publications, including the bi-annual UCL Press catalogue
• Creating optimised web content for your book
• Social media posts about your book

Once your book is published, we use a range of promotional methods to publicise your book- these may include:

• Social media posts about your book
• Conferences inserts/ advertisements
• Email and direct mail campaigns
• Blog posts about your book / including excerpts
• Directory listings (e.g. the Directory of open access books)
• Sending review copies (to both niche and, where appropriate, mainstream titles)
• Working with our platform partners to ensure that your book reaches its full potential on their platforms
• Collaborating with authors to enable them to effectively promote their work.

Find out more about the things you can do to help gain maximum exposure for your book here.

We work to distribute all UCL Press books widely in order for them to reached their desired readership.

Open Access
All UCL Press titles are disseminated across a number of platforms to reach readers worldwide, including:

UCL Discovery

JSTOR

OAPEN

Google Play

Google Books

World Reader

Baobab

Print sales
We work with a team of sales agents and distributors, Compass Academic, who help us to sell print copies of all of our books to retailers (online, independents, chains, specialist and campus bookshops), wholesalers and library suppliers in the UK. In North America, UCL Press books are distributed and marketed by Chicago University Press.

Book Publication Charge (BPC) Waiver Scheme

We are excited to introduce a new waiver scheme that will allow us to waive our Book Publication Charge (BPC) for five selected non-UCL authors each year. The scheme demonstrates UCL’s commitment to Open Access publishing and our awareness of the challenges faced by non-funded authors.

We will consider any books of exceptional quality – monographs, edited volumes and textbooks – that offer a distinct voice, have the potential to make an impact, and are written in an engaging and accessible tone. Authors who wish to be considered for the scheme should note their interest in an accompanying email when they submit their proposal.

Please address any questions to the relevant Commissioning Editor:

• Dr Chris Penfold, at c.penfold@ucl.ac.uk (All subjects excluding education)
• Pat Gordon Smith (p.gordon-smith@ucl.ac.uk) (Education and related subjects)

We do not publish PhD theses, but we do consider monograph proposals based on PhD research. If you wish to publish a monograph based on PhD research, it is important to understand the differences between a thesis and a monograph.

How is a thesis different to a monograph?

Many of the differences between a thesis and a monograph lie in their distinct purposes. The purpose of your thesis was to learn and demonstrate what you had learnt, and it was examined according to this purpose. It was, and still is, evidence of your ability to define a topic, develop and apply methodologies, and undertake research. Your monograph, however, will be evidence of your ability to explore and connect a range of ideas in a fresh way, creating a new perspective that will aim to inform and influence a field of knowledge or discipline.

The audience of your thesis reflected its purpose. It was a predetermined audience and likely comprised your supervisor and examination panel. The audience of your monograph will be international and considerably broader, potentially consisting of undergraduate and postgraduate students, professional researchers, policymakers and other groups of readers outside the academy.

Rethinking your project

Due to their different purpose and audience, your thesis cannot easily become a monograph. A revised thesis is often still a thesis. This is because the underlying foundations – your presence as the author, your tone and argument – have remained untouched, bound in the conventions of a thesis. There may be remnants of the referencing and signposting that made your authorial presence in the thesis difficult to identify, and it may still feel overly formal, with its passive voice retained along with a predictable structure.

During the rewriting process, you will embed the purpose and intended audience of your monograph in the foundations of the work. Your presence as the author will be stronger, you will quote sparingly, and your structure will help you to explore and connect ideas in a logical and comprehensible way.

It may be necessary to put your thesis to one side and revisit your research data to decide how you can make the most important contribution to your discipline. What do people need to know? What knowledge can you offer that is most in demand? What future trends can you detect?

Seeking advice

There is a wealth of advice available to you on the thesis-to-monograph process, from books written by editors and researchers to your supervisor, examiners and peers. We encourage you to use these resources to help you grasp a clear understanding of how to approach the task.