How to publish with De Gruyter
Interested in publishing your book with De Gruyter? Here is all the information you need, sorted according to the phases in the publication process.
Do you have a proposal or manuscript?
How do you decide where to best place your manuscript in De Gruyter’s portfolio?
Our publishing departments are presented below.
Publishing departments
Diverse program
Our editorial teams are responsible for 29 subject areas.
Concentrated expertise
Our editors are specialists in their fields and will be on hand to assist you with any questions about the publication process.
What drives us
With professional expertise and friendliness, we always have the essentials in mind: The quality of your publication.
Internal coordination and peer review
1. Coordination
First, the relevant publishing division looks over your proposal or manuscript, coordinating with the editors of the series (where appropriate). In this process, we evaluate the quality of your manuscript, check whether your work is a good fit for our portfolio, and assess its marketability.
2. Peer Review
Our publications undergo an evaluation process prior to publication. All external reviewers are researchers or academics specializing in the title’s subject area. We can apply plagiarism checks or a fake manuscript detection system to ensure content quality.
3. Feedback
After evaluating your work, you will receive expert feedback from us. We may request that you make changes or improvements to your proposal.
Product information and calculations
If we think your book is a good fit for our program, we will prepare your project for an internal decision on the content and economic feasibility.
In order to best market your work, we will take the opportunity early on to ask you some important details about you and your manuscript. We will then work with you to optimize this information for search engines. We have professionals translate the marketing materials for foreign-language titles into English, enabling us to advertise them in our bilingual catalogs.
Please send the questionnaire to your editorial contact.
The information is later exported to sales partners and libraries as metadata. For this reason, it is important for the full set of details to be provided:
To assess the cost-effectiveness of your project and determine the price, we carry out individual calculations for each title.
Several factors play a role in this process; for example, the size of the target audience competing works, suitability for a series, the type of manuscript preparation, the complexity of the typesetting, and the number of illustrations.
Your publishing division will notify you if grant funding is needed for your book’s publication. Needless to say, in this event, we will support you in applying for external funding by providing the necessary calculations, while ensuring compliance with the relevant eligibility guidelines.
If you have opted for open access publication, your editor will inform you about the amount to be paid in fees. We will support you in applying for funding, while ensuring compliance with the relevant eligibility guidelines.
Click here for detailed information about open access.
In the last step of the evaluation, your editor will present your project at the in-house decision round, where it will be discussed by staff from Marketing, Sales, and Production. Once your project is approved, we will send a publication contract for you to sign.
Contract
We conclude a custom contract with every author, detailing the arrangements that you have agreed in advance with your editor. Our general terms and conditions of publication, which govern the working relationship and assignment of rights, are also an integral part of the contract.
Copyright
If you use sections of text or images from third parties in your manuscript, you are responsible for obtaining the appropriate rights to use or edit these. You are welcome to use this template to do so. If you have any questions about legal matters, please contact your editor.
Like many other high-profile academic publishers, De Gruyter is a member of the STM Association. Usually, printing permissions are granted to members free of charge. More information.
Manuscript editing
We have compiled a set of documents to help you bring structure into your document. Guidelines for drafting manuscripts you can find here. Word and LaTeX templates for creating manuscripts can be requested from your contact person.
We offer different levels of copy-editing depending on the type of product and manuscript. This means that, if necessary, we will draw your attention to flaws in the language of the manuscript and help you to make revisions. Your editor will be happy to advise you during this process.
We have compiled information about the preparation and the transfer of image data here.
Naturally, you can contact us at any time if you have questions.
You as the author are best equipped to create a high-quality index. We can advise you, and information about our technical specifications and guidelines is available here.
From manuscript to finished book
We distinguish between two different options for submitting your manuscript
- If you submit a camera-ready manuscript copy, this means you are responsible for typesetting your text.
- Alternatively, you can leave the coordination of the typesetting process by professionals to us. We recommend you speak to your editor to discuss what is appropriate for your project.
The inner design of De Gruyter books and journal is based on the De Gruyter House Style, which was specially developed with renowned typography agency Edenspiekermann. Style guide and sample pages to authors preparing a camera-ready copy are available.
If you have opted to submit a camera-ready copy, we can provide Word, LaTeX, or InDesign templates for you to format your text. You will also need the font DG Meta Science, which is used to set all our publications. After you have signed your publishing contract, you will receive both a template and a font package from your production editor. Please do not use the templates for creating manuscripts!
Our production department will assist you with using the templates, and will guide you through the rest of the publication process. If you choose this option, we will ask you for an initial sample chapter at an early stage.
After submitting the complete manuscript, ideally with index entries embedded, a production editor will guide you through the steps of production through to your publication’s imprimatur. In the typesetting process, your manuscript will be converted to the De Gruyter House Style, including any special characters, tables, formulae, and graphics. We rely on professional typesetters for the technically demanding implementation of our specifications, assuring a high quality outcome with a two-stage process (both externally and internally).
You will generally receive two sets of page proofs. In the first correction stage, we ask you to make any typesetting corrections. In the second round, you will check the corrections that have been made, before giving us permission to print (the imprimatur).
As your work is converted into the De Gruyter House Style, the preliminary pages and the jacket are created. Our graphics department will produce a suitable cover for your book.
Titles published as part of a series receive the series design. The front cover will be advertized on the website and in catalogs prior to publication. As soon as the book goes into production, we finalize the cover including the blurb if applicable.
Marketing
We use a wide range of communication to promote our authors’ publications, from newsletters and e-mail campaigns to targeted marketing activities through our retail partners. We are experts in the fields of abstracting and indexing services, as well as on social media.
In addition, our website offers you and your book a platform for both marketing activities and sales.
There are currently approximately 200 organizations with some 500 databases providing abstracting and indexing services.
These range from academic services covering individual or all disciplines to services geared solely to open access publications. De Gruyter works together with all these services, and we are expanding our cooperation with new providers.
You will receive free copies of your work for your own personal use. Your editor will discuss the details with you and they will be fixed as part of your contract.
We are also happy to provide you with specimen copies containing additional bound pages for your university library upon request.
Instructors can use this form to easily and conveniently order an inspection copy of a textbook.
We make your work available to all relevant academic journals and media for reviewing. We also save published reviews to a digital archive, and share a selection of these reviews online at your book’s web page. We send you custom e-mails so you can access the reviews published about your book.
We actively use several subject-specific accounts on Facebook and Twitter. New releases and highlights are regularly communicated to more than 32,000 fans and followers via the De Gruyter social media platforms. Our De Gruyter Conversations blog offers exciting contributions on topics relevant to the moment.
Have you always wanted to write a blog post? Just send us your article idea to conversations@degruyter.com and we will support you in getting it published.
Sales
Our sales teams work to boost the visibility of your book by employing our many years of experience, as well as the extraordinary reach of our distribution network.
Our international sales team is spread throughout regional offices all over the globe. Our professional expertise in the market and first-class customer contacts allow us to offer academic content ideally suited to the needs of target audiences.
If the stock level of your title falls below a set minimum amount in our warehouse, our print on demand service is activated. This keeps the print edition of your book available for international delivery on an ongoing basis.
De Gruyter maintains strategic distribution partnerships with internationally renowned publishers such as Harvard University Press, Princeton University Press, and Penn Press. These help to expand our portfolio, as well as further increase its appeal with additional top-class content. Click here to learn more about our partnerships.
Our Rights and Permissions Department offers all titles that would be suitable for other international publishers in licensed/translated editions. This way, we can ensure that your intellectual property rights are protected in the event of reprints or translations. When requests for permissions come in, we will take care of the communication and licensing process on your behalf, and we share the revenues with you.
After publication
We remain at your side, even after your title has been published. Naturally, we will keep you up-to-date and informed about all the important developments related to your book.
Want to add a chapter of your book to your own website or your university’s website? Find our guidelines here.
Your editor will let you know whether and how much is due to be paid for your work in royalties. If royalties are assigned to you in your contract, we will provide you with a yearly statement of sales.
Authors who are EU citizens or legal residents can register with Germany-based collecting society VG Wort, enabling them to receive a share of the proceeds that VG Wort collects and manages. According to currently applicable case law, all VG Wort authors (including non-EU citizens) are permitted to give VG Wort consent for publishers to continue to receive a share of the payout. That is the reason we write to you once a year asking for active consent.
Currently, we do not participate in the Metis payment system, though you can still benefit from this by registering for it separately. For further details, visit www.vgwort.de.
You always have the option to order additional copies of your book at your discounted rate. Please do not hesitate to contact our Customer Service Team if you have any questions.
Author Name Change Policy
At De Gruyter, we know that there is a lot in a name. We recognize that people change their names for a number of reasons, including changes in gender identity, religion, or marital status, and believe they should be able to do so easily and discreetly.
What you need to do:
If you have published with De Gruyter and would like to change your name on existing publications, here’s what you need to know.
Please submit a name change request to namechangepolicy@degruyter.com providing:
- Your previous name
- Your current name
- Your previous e-mail address if it has changed
- The DOI(s) of the publication(s) to be updated
You do not need to provide official proof of your name change.
You may inform any co-authors or (co-)editors if you wish to do so. To protect your privacy, De Gruyter will not notify anyone else of your name change.
Creating an ORCID iD is a good way to make sure you are identified as the author of all your work regardless of the name under which you published it.
What we will (and will not) do:
- We replace the original version of your publication with the updated version. Please be aware it may take a few weeks for the change to be effected. The DOI of your publication will stay the same.
- The updated publication will not include any notice of change, anonymized or otherwise.
- We notify our indexing partners of the change to ensure discoverability under your new name. We cannot guarantee if and when the indexing information will be updated.
- For technical and legal purposes, we store a version of your work bearing your previous name in our data warehouse. This version will not be made publicly available and will only be accessible to authorized De Gruyter staff.
Want to help us improve our policy? Please send your feedback to namechangepolicy@degruyter.com
