Scholarly Publishing Toolkit

Many publishers are members of trade groups or publishing organizations. Some of the best known of these groups are listed below. Use these resources to help you identify where to publish.

Highly recommended: Identify publishers that are COPE members.

• Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE): After a review of the organization's application and publishing practices, COPE may add to their membership a "journal, publisher, organization, university or research institute [which] intends to follow the highest standards of publication ethics and to apply COPE principles of publication ethics outlined in the Core Practices."

Several organizations listed below helped develop the "Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing" that can assist authors in evaluating publishers and publications, and help potential editors and reviewers make informed decisions about service opportunities.

• DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals): "The Directory of Open Access Journals is a service that indexes high quality, peer reviewed Open Access research journals.... The Directory aims to be comprehensive and cover all open access academic journals that use an appropriate quality control system ... and is not limited to particular languages or subject areas."
• International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers: "STM is the leading global trade association for academic and professional publishers. It has over 120 members in 21 countries who each year collectively publish nearly 66% of all journal articles and tens of thousands of monographs and reference works. STM members include learned societies, university presses, private companies, new starts and established players."
• Society for Scholarly Publishing: "The Society for Scholarly Publishing ... is a nonprofit organization formed to promote and advance communication among all sectors of the scholarly publication community through networking, information dissemination, and facilitation of new developments in the field."
• OASPA (Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association): OASPA's mission "is to represent the interests of Open Access (OA) journal and book publishers globally in all scientific, technical and scholarly disciplines. This mission will be carried out through exchanging information, setting standards, advancing models, advocacy, education, and the promotion of innovation."
• WAME (World Association of Medical Editors): WAME "is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit voluntary association of editors of peer-reviewed medical journals from countries throughout the world who seek to foster international cooperation among and education of medical journal editors. Membership in WAME is free and all decision-making editors of peer-reviewed medical journals are eligible to join. Membership is also available to selected scholars in journal editorial policy and peer review."

Journal directories and journal data services:

Monographs

Find out if any of the publisher's books have won awards.  Also, look for book reviews of their titles in relevant databases.

For further assistance, talk to your subject librarian.  Subject librarians can suggest references that will help you identify and evaluate publishing opportunities, such as The Directory of Small Press & Magazine Editors & Publishers and other publishing directories.