Journal Proposals
Our Editorial Mission
When The Berkeley Electronic Press launched its first journals in December 2000, we set out to improve three major weaknesses in academic journal publishing: speed, access, and cost. Our journals offer fast and high-quality peer review, they allow wide dissemination and access, and we offer them at prices that libraries can easily afford.
We add new journals to our collection judiciously, and keep the collection of all bepress journals at a very high quality across the board. We devote significant resources and attention to help new journals reach their potential. Advantages of bringing a journal to The Berkeley Electronic Press include extensive dissemination to our established audiences, unparalleled readership - including non-subscribers - thanks to our innovative guest access policy, easy-to-master software to reduce editorial burdens, and a generous profit-sharing plan.
We seek to add journals whose editors are among the leading figures in their field, and whose intellectual profile stands out from comparable existing journals. We especially welcome the following kinds of journals:
- Journals in emerging fields and those that are underserved by other major publishers. Because bepress is more commercially agile, we are willing to take on journals in unproven fields. This is an important intellectual contribution to the scholarly community, which needs publishers to support new scholarship even before its field becomes commercially profitable.
- Journals in fields that benefit from significantly faster publication time. Papers submitted to traditional journals in, for example, genetics and molecular biology, or presidential elections, can languish in the peer-review queue well after the subject matter loses its immediacy. Thanks to our technical infrastructure that speeds up peer review and publication, our journals add new value to such fields.
- Journals in fields that are notoriously overpriced. We look at comparable journals; if the field is strangled by a few high-priced journals, we can add significant intellectual value by offering an equally high-quality alternative at a more sustainable price.
- General-interest and practitioner journals. Our flexible interface and wide access especially suits journals that want to reach out to a general-interest audience, practitioners, and other non-academics. Two of our most successful journals follow this model: The Economists’ Voice is a general-interest economics journal, and the Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management is a major journal that serves practitioners as well as academics.
Journal Proposals
The Berkeley Electronic Press is pleased to consider proposals for launching new journals or bringing existing publications under our imprint. If you are interested in sending The Berkeley Electronic Press a journal proposal, we ask that it contain the following elements:
- Title
- Aims & scope
- Editors, along with CVs
- Existing and possible editorial board members
- Other journals in the field, and differentiating factors
- Target audience
- Plans for recruiting content
- Examples of the types of papers you currently publish or would seek to publish
- Timing to launch the journal's first issue with bepress
- For existing journals: publishing history and availability of back content
Please email your proposal and accompanying documents to .