Research support
Publishing your research
Library and Learning Services can provide support and guidance when publishing your research.
Where to publish
Library and Learning Services will never tell you where to publish your research, but we can offer advice and resources that may help when trying to find a publisher.
Think. Check. Submit. aims to help researchers identify trusted publishers for journal articles and book chapters. The questions, tools and resources support researchers when considering potential publishers for their work.
They may also help identify if a publisher is suitable, ensuring that their principles aligned with best practice.
For articles and journals: Think. Check. Submit. - Journals
For books and chapters: Think. Check. Submit. - Books and chapters
For conferences: Think. Check. Attend.
There are lots of journal check tools to help you get an idea of journals that publish similar or related themes and publisher policies.
If you have received research funding, your research funder may have publishing and open access (OA) requirements. Journal checker tools can help you identify funding compliance.
- B!SON: Bibliometric and Semantic Open Access Recommender Network. Using abstracts and keywords, it can map journals of relevance.
- JANE: Journal Author Name Estimator
- Journal Checker Tool: A Plan S developed Open Access tool that checks if potential journals support compliance with your research funder.
- ChronosHub: A large database cross referencing journal finding, funding, policies
- Open Policy Finder: Provides information about Open Access journals, books and funders.
For further information and support on research funder policies, visit our Research Funder Open Access Publication Policies page.
Journal and publisher metrics can provide information about publishing patterns. They can provide average rates of acceptances, times between submission and publication as well as geographic reach.
Citation databases can demonstrate the impact of a journal and publishers. The university has subscription to Scopus and Web of Science, but there are additional Open Access citation and indexing tools such as:
York St John University is committed to fair, transparent and inclusive use of research metrics and is a signatory of Declaration of Research Assessment (DORA). For more information view the Responsible Metrics Statement.
Researchers may receive direct invitations of work from publishers. If you receive an email from a publisher with these offers don’t respond straight away as they may not be reputable publisher. Contact RaY@yorksj.ac.uk who can provide further advice.
All York St John corresponding authors should use their York St John email address at all stages of the publication process. Authors should also ensure that their York St John affiliation is clearly indicated by using the correct conventions for their current York St John University School or Department.
Longform publishing
Longform publications include books, monographs, edited collections and book chapters.
Longform publishing can be through traditional publication routes or through open access routes, which may incur large costs. These costs are known as Book Processing Charges (BPCs).
Under the York St John Open Access policy, authors are encouraged to publish research using the Green or Diamond routes to open access where possible. These open access routes result in no publishing costs to the author.
- York St John University holds no institutional funds for Book Processing Charges (BPCs) for open access longform publishing.
- For support in finding grants or funding-based applications for longform research and publication costs, contact the Research Grants team in the Research Office at researchgrants@yorksj.ac.uk
- For support with publication matters for longform outputs such as contracts or publisher policies contact the Scholarly Communications Team in the Library at ray@yorksj.ac.uk
If you are thinking of publishing an open access book, see the York St John longform publication guide for key information about the process. The OA Books Toolkit is also openly availably to support academics and researchers understand OA for books and provide publication guidance.
Publishing contracts
Once your research has been accepted by a publisher, you should receive a publishing contract. Make sure you read any contracts carefully and check that you understand all the terms. Publishing contracts can be negotiated - you don't need to sign the first contract you're given.
There are certain things you should consider when reading and negotiating your contract. These can differ depending on what you are publishing.
Will the deadlines conflict with any other projects or teaching?
Are royalty payments clearly outlined? Who will pay for any copyright permissions?
What will the cost and licensing options be for Higher Education institutions?
Do you need to become a member of the Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society (ACLS)?
Will the text be available in print and electronically?
Will an affordable library ebook model be available and on which platform(s)?
Will an accessible version of the text be available?
Does the publisher support OA - will the publisher allow a chapter to be made open on RaY?
Will you be able to use the research in your teaching?
Will you be able to build upon and use that research again in the future?
Have you received any research funding, and does the publish comply with funder policies?
Does the funder policies align with York St John's Open Access and Rights Retention policies?
Retaining copyright in publishing
In traditional publishing models, publishers may ask you to transfer copyright ownership to them when signing a publishing contract. As a result, research is under the control of academic publishers and authors may be restricted in using their work.
For work with ISBNs (books, book chapters) or audio-visual publications, where possible, we recommend you retain copyright by signing a licence to publish. This grants the publisher an exclusive right to publish that work while you retain some rights.
If you transfer copyright of these works to the publisher, you may need to get permission from the publisher to use the research in your teaching or to build upon the research in the future.
Further information is available on our related pages:
The ALCS is a not for profit membership organisation for writers that collects royalty money due to UK works (books, articles and scripts) from around the world and then distributes the money owed to members.
The money they collect is from 'secondary uses' of works, such as photocopies, digital reproductions and educational recordings. Anyone who has ever written anything that has been published or broadcast can join. See the Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society website for further information.
For works published with an ISSN (journal articles, conference proceedings), authors can retain the copyright over their Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) under York St John University's Rights Retention Policy.
This allows researchers to have their work made Open Access immediately on the University's institutional repository (RaY) at no additional cost, and avoiding any publisher set embargoes. This is made possible by authors placing a Rights Retention statement on a submitted work with a CC BY licence which automatically grants York St John a non-exclusive, irrevocable, royalty-free, worldwide licence to store and share AAMs on RaY.
For further information see the full Rights Retention webpage.
Benefits of Retaining rights:
- Authors have more freedom to use, modify and distribute their own work.
- Negotiating terms with publishers and retaining rights may allow embargoed or restricted work for teaching purposes.
- Authors can grant non-exclusive licences to others and can choose and control how their work is used on a case-by-case basis.
- Under York St John's Right Retention Policy, there is no payment for publishing work assigned an ISSN.
Paying to publish
York St John University supports the principles of open access (OA). Where possible we ask researchers to follow the Green or Diamond OA route, where there are no publishing costs to the author.
- Green OA: a version of a research output is made available free of charge to readers, often through an online repository and usually with an embargo period set by the publisher. For research published with an ISSN, where the selected publisher has been pre-notified, York St John's Rights Retention Policy will apply and no embargo is required.
- Diamond OA: neither author or readers pay any charge and research outputs are published, made available immediately and can be reused according to the licence applied to the work.
Gold Open Access is the only open access route available for Gold Journals, and this where an Article Processing Charge (APC) is required. The Library and Research Office do not have any funds for APCs.
APCs are required after acceptance. Reputable publishers will not ask for any payment on submission.
Please contact RaY@yorksj.ac.uk if you are ever asked by a publisher for payment before formal acceptance.
Open Access community-driven framework initiatives enable multiple stakeholders to collectively fund OA content.
Find out more about the initiatives we have pledged money towards on our dedicated OA page.
Alongside supporting open access publishing initiatives, Library and Learning Services have some transitional agreements with publishers.
Transitional agreements are also known as Read and Publish agreements. They provide access to the publisher's subscription journals while also allowing our researchers to publish research articles with that publisher immediately open access (OA) without any article process charges (APCs) or with discounted/capped APCs.
Please note that the Library and Learning Services team and the Research Office do not have funding for APCs or BPCs (book processing charges).
Find out more about the agreements we are part of on our dedicated page.
