Publish with us
General information
We are an online institutional publisher of electronic journals, research monographs, working papers and reports. For the purposes of these guidelines, working papers are defined as discussion/consultation papers relating to research in progress, and reports are defined as summaries of completed research.
We expect our monograph volumes to have a wordcount of 20,000-80,000 words, but submissions of longer monographs will also be considered.
Editors and authors of works in non-traditional formats are welcome to contact us for bespoke guidelines, if those shown below are not applicable.
At Cardiff University Press, we do not tolerate plagiarism of any kind in our publications. Details of our anti-plagiarism procedures are available here.
Costs and charges
We are an Open Access publisher, offering all our publications free of charge to readers worldwide under a Creative Commons licence. We do not charge the authors and editors of journals and non-book series for publishing with us (Diamond Open Access), whether they are affiliated with Cardiff University or not.
Every monograph we publish must have at least one author or editor who is affiliated with Cardiff University. It is usually possible for us to cover all the basic (mandatory) publishing costs of the monograph, so that its authors or editors are only invoiced for any additional publishing options they choose to order. However, this arrangement for basic publishing costs is conditional upon levels of Cardiff University Press funding; when there is insufficient funding available, the author or editor will be invoiced for the full Book Processing Charge if they decide to proceed with publication. The funding situation will be confirmed with the author or editor at an early stage of the publication process.
The basic costs of publishing a Cardiff University Press monograph vary, depending on several different factors such as total wordcount, number of chapters, layouts, weight of paper used and so on. Most monographs cost around £5,500 to £6,000 including VAT, but longer or more complex volumes can cost £8,000 or more. Optional additional publishing cost estimates range from £120 to £1,400 including VAT, depending on what is requested.
For editors
We are happy to consider proposals for new titles. Editors wishing to transfer established journal or series titles to Cardiff University Press are also welcome to apply. Please check the guidelines below, then contact us for further information.
Guidelines for serial proposals (journals, working paper series and report series)
Download our proposal forms for:
Journals
Monograph, report or working paper series
- Titles must be managed by an independent editorial team of acknowledged experts in the field, including at least one Cardiff University academic and at least one academic from another University.
- Themes and subject areas should be relevant to the research interests of at least one Cardiff University academic or group of academics.
- There must be no charges for authors and other contributors to publish their work, and we apply Open Access licences to all work published by Cardiff University Press. We recommend that journals adopt CC BY-NC-ND as the default licence to prevent their material from being resold or repurposed commercially. However, we can discuss alternative licensing arrangements for the journal or for individual articles should this be needed to meet funding or other requirements.
- Calls for publication should actively encourage submissions from international contributors.
- On submission of a journal or series publication proposal, it will be reviewed by the Cardiff University Press Editorial Board. If it is successful, we will agree a publishing contract with the editor and advise them on compiling a Licence to Publish document for their authors.
Guidelines for monograph proposals (books, book series, single working papers and single reports)
Download our proposal forms for:
Monograph, report or working paper series
Single scholarly books, edited volumes or other monographs
- Each book series must be managed by an independent editorial team of acknowledged experts in the field, including at least one Cardiff University academic and at least one academic from another University.
- Themes and subject areas of monograph submissions should be relevant to the research interests of at least one Cardiff University academic or group of academics. We do not accept monographs aimed primarily at undergraduate students or members of the public; the main focus of all our monographs is on academic research.
- We do not allow simultaneous submissions. Any monographs submitted to us for publication must not be under consideration for publication by another publisher at the same time.
- All our monograph publications are peer reviewed by academic staff with appropriate disciplinary specialisms, who have been chosen by our Monograph Commissioning Panel. If previous peer reviews exist for a submitted monograph, we would be interested to see them, but our decision on whether or not to publish the monograph will be made on the basis of our own peer reviewers’ recommendations, not those of previous reviewers.
- There must be no charges for readers to access and download the work. As stated above, a submitted monograph will only be considered for publication by Cardiff University Press if at least one of its authors or editors is a member of Cardiff University. It is usually possible for the basic (mandatory) publishing costs of these monographs to be covered by Cardiff University Press, so that the authors or editors will only be invoiced for any additional publishing options they choose to order. However, this arrangement for basic publishing costs is conditional upon levels of Cardiff University Press funding; when there is insufficient funding available, some authors and editors will be invoiced for the full Book Processing Charges if they decide to proceed with publication. We will confirm the funding situation with them at an early stage of the publication process.
- If you are a prospective editor who wants to publish a single volume, you are welcome to submit an expression of interest and/or a proposal form to us before completion of the manuscript. Alternatively, if you have the full manuscript ready now, please submit it with the form straight away.
- If you are a prospective editor who wants to publish a monograph series, you will need to complete both a series proposal form and a single volume proposal form, then submit them together with the full manuscript of the first volume in the series.
- Please note that we do not accept hard copy manuscripts.
- On receipt of the forms and manuscript for most monograph formats, our Monograph Commissioning Panel will consider them, and will send them out for peer review if they meet the Panel’s criteria. The Panel will recommend acceptance or rejection to the Editorial Board, based on the peer reviews received and the editor's or author's responses to them. If the work is accepted for publication, we will agree a publishing contract with the editor or author.
- For monograph series, each volume in the series must be submitted and peer reviewed separately.
- We apply Creative Commons licences to all work published by Cardiff University Press, offering a choice of two for monographs: CC BY-NC (Attribution-NonCommercial) or CC BY-NC-ND (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives). Editors must select the most appropriate default licence for each volume, so that they can ensure UK funder compliance. For edited volumes, we allow individual authors to choose either licence for their own work, irrespective of the default licence chosen by the editor, so that authors can ensure UK funder compliance. Editors are required to inform their authors that they have this choice.
For authors
Submission guidelines for serials (journal articles, working paper series and report series)
- Each publication’s guidelines will indicate whether the editor wishes to receive submissions via email or via the hosting platform submission system. For platform submissions, authors will need to register on this website.
- Suitable submissions are sent for peer review and must complete the peer review process before the editorial team makes a final decision about acceptance or rejection of the work.
- As a Diamond Open Access publisher of journals and series, we will not charge authors any fees to publish articles with us. The full text of their work will be available free of charge for anyone to read online.
- We allow authors to retain copyright over their work.
- Authors may self-archive their work at any stage, but we ask that they acknowledge the Cardiff University Press publication as the definitive source of their work, the version of record.
Submission guidelines for single volumes (books, single working papers and single reports)
Download our proposal forms for:
Single scholarly books, edited volumes or other monographs
- We do not allow simultaneous submissions. Any monographs submitted to us for publication must not be under consideration for publication by another publisher at the same time.
- Themes and subject areas of monographs should be relevant to the research interests of at least one Cardiff University academic or group of academics. We do not accept monographs aimed primarily at undergraduate students or members of the public; the main focus of all our monographs is on academic research.
- Unrevised doctoral theses are not suitable for publication by Cardiff University Press. We will consider monographs based on doctoral research, but we expect that a PhD thesis will need substantial revisions, and often additional research, to make it suitable for publication as a monograph. For further guidance on the differences between a thesis and a monograph derived from a thesis, please go to our Thesis Guidelines page or contact us.
- If you are a prospective author seeking publication of a single volume, you are welcome to submit an expression of interest and/or a proposal form to us before completion of your manuscript. Alternatively, if you have the full manuscript ready now, please submit it with the form straight away.
- Please note that we do not accept hard copy manuscripts.
- On receipt of the manuscript and form, our Monograph Commissioning Panel will consider them, and will send them out for peer review if they meet the Panel’s criteria. The Panel will recommend acceptance or rejection to the Editorial Board, based on the peer reviews received and the author's responses to them.
- All our monograph publications are peer reviewed by academic staff with appropriate disciplinary specialisms, who have been chosen by our Monograph Commissioning Panel. If previous peer reviews exist for a submitted monograph, we would be interested to see them, but our decision on whether or not to publish the monograph will be made on the basis of our own peer reviewers’ recommendations, not those of previous reviewers.
- If the volume is accepted for publication, we will agree a publishing contract with the author or editor.
- As stated above, a submitted monograph will only be considered for publication by Cardiff University Press if at least one of its authors or editors is a member of Cardiff University. It is usually possible for the basic (mandatory) publishing costs of these monographs to be covered by Cardiff University Press, so that the authors will only be invoiced for any additional publishing options they choose to order. However, this arrangement for basic publishing costs is conditional upon levels of Cardiff University Press funding; when there is insufficient funding available, some authors will be invoiced for the full Book Processing Charges if they decide to proceed with publication. We will confirm the funding situation with them at an early stage of the publication process.
- The full text of the published volume will be available free of charge for anyone to read online. We allow authors to retain copyright over their work. They may choose the CC BY-NC (Attribution-NonCommercial) or the CC BY-NC-ND (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives) licence, thereby ensuring UK funder licensing compliance. We require that our series editors inform the authors of monographs within the series that they have this choice. Editors of edited volumes are required to do the same.
- Authors may self-archive their work at any stage, but we ask that they acknowledge the Cardiff University Press publication as the definitive source of their work, the version of record.
