Academic publishing is a very specialized field for those that choose it as a career and for those the choose it to communicate their research. Terms like open access, altmetrics, Orcid ID, FundRef, Sci-Hub, DOI, CC-BY, predatory publishing, and many more can leave someone new to the area with more questions than answers.

Scholarly Publishing: A Primer sheds light on some of the essential topics that are integral to academic publishing. This concise and focused book looks at numerous key topics in plain language. Starting with the basics of scholarly publishing, it then moves onto the specifics of book and journal publishing, then marketing and promotion, then to organizations and standards, then to rights and licensing, and finally it looks at trends in publishing.

Scholarly Publishing: A Primer is not meant to be the definitive text in scholarly publishing but rather a primer for busy people. The chapters are very short and conversational in tone. The book ends with an appendix that lists publishing organizations with appropriate links. The book is written by a leader in the scholarly publishing field, John Bond, who has 30 plus years’ experience in journal and book publishing. He last served as Chief Content Officer for an international scholarly publisher before becoming a publishing consultant. The book is a byproduct of the author’s YouTube channel, “Publishing Defined.”

The book is primarily geared toward people that will be working in scholarly publishing, such as editors, publishers, and marketers. Secondarily the book benefits content professionals in the
academic fields who want to know more about the nuts and bolts of publishing, such as university professors, editorial board members, future authors, or just ambitious or curious individuals.

Scholarly publishing can cover many areas. It encompasses serious academic publishing endeavors for educated professionals such as physicians, nurses, scientists, engineers, lawyers, researchers, social scientists, and many more. It is centered on research, professional and continuing education, and furthering intellectual discourse.

Chapters include: “What is a Peer Review?”, “What is a Content Hub?”, “What is Preprint?”, “What is Digital Rights Management?,” “What is Text Mining?”, and over thirty more.

Scholarly Publishing: A Primer is the perfect introduction to the technical aspects of publishing in science, technology, engineering, and medicine.