Formal Declaration on Open Access Policy

See also the OA Portal, the Self-Archiving Policy, and the Gallery of OA titles.

This page collates policy details on how we handle Open Access publications, and is structured as a response to the Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association (OASPA) criteria and guidelines. For a more explanatory approach, aimed at authors who may be new to OA, see our Open Access Frequently Asked Questions page.

Note that MHRA publishes some of its books and journals as Open Access, and others not. Most of what is written below applies equally to both, and in particular everything about peer review, editorial selection, and rules of conduct. But details of licences, and other OA-specific matters, apply of course only to our OA publications.

Ownership and management

MHRA is a scholarly charity (UK charity no. 1064670), founded in 1918, which is also a company limited by guarantee (registered in England number 3446016). We are managed by elected Officers and Trustees: see the names and contact email addresses here. See also our aims and objectives.

Direct marketing

We do not at present conduct direct marketing and we collect no data on our readers. We follow the GDPR in full, and our policy on data protection is here.

Advertising

We take no advertising, either on our website or in any of our print publications.

Business model

We are a charity. We are funded by sales and subscription income from publications, endowment income from investments accumulated over the last century of our operations, and miscellaneous smaller sources, including membership.

Editorial affiliations

A full list of editors, with their affiliations, is given for each book series and each journal. For example, the editors for Modern Language Review are shown here.

Fees

There is a fee for Gold OA publication of a book: see the Open Access Frequently Asked Questions page for full details. Gold OA is opt-in, so authors can instead publish the same book as a closed-access title. Authors are not asked their wishes until after a project has been accepted for publication.

There are no other fees for publication of books or articles with MHRA.

While OASPA recommends that author guidelines be linked from the home page of a publisher’s website, MHRA is also a charity and publishing is not its only activity, so our home page is not the best place for this. Instead, the relevant guidelines are given on the home page of each book series or journal. For example, these are the proposal guidelines shared by our 11 Legenda book series.

Our OA policies are available from the navigation menu on every page of our site, including the home page.

The Open Access Frequently Asked Questions page goes into the details on this, but to summarize:

  • For our OA publications, the licences are stated on both the website, with links to the relevant Creative Commons terms, in any downloadable PDFs, and in all print editions (if any).

  • We use only Creative Commons 4.0 licences.

  • In OA publications, authors retain copyright in their work.

  • MHRA is a member of Crossref and provides DOIs for all its OA content, with the prefix 10.59860.

Peer review

We have 17 active book series and five journals. Submission and peer review procedures differ from series to series, and books and journals have different needs. See the individual home pages for details. But the following broad principles apply to all:

  • Any author may propose a book. No university affiliation is required.

  • Book proposals are considered in the first instance by the editorial committee for the relevant series. The committee may also consider supporting material submitted by the author (such as an examiners’ report for a doctoral thesis from which the book is drawn).

  • Each draft manuscript is normally read anonymously by an expert reader chosen by the committee, who reports on its suitability. Readers are almost invariably senior academics holding a university post, and are never employees of MHRA.

  • The relevant editorial committee then decides whether or not to accept a book. If so, it is placed under contract, but there are normally further rounds of drafting and scrutiny before production begins. The contract commits us and the author to work together towards that goal.

  • For up to two books each year which are winners of the annual prize of the Association of Hispanists of Great Britain and Ireland (AHGBI), we accept a project on the nomination of the judges. These prizes are awarded for the best doctoral theses of their year in the field. In such cases, our anonymous reader still reads and reports on a draft exactly as for other books, but to provide constructive feedback rather than to decide on publication.

Our only OA journal is Working Papers in the Humanities. The editors select an annual theme, and issue a public call for papers. Calls for papers from recent years are gathered here. Submissions are then peer-reviewed, and a selection is made.

Conduct and conflicts of interest

Being a charity, the MHRA is strictly audited and regulated in its financial affairs. Only two of its Trustees are employees, the Company Secretary and the Associate Treasurer: all other Trustees, including the Hon. Chair and the Hon. Treasurer, are unpaid. Since we have no owners, nobody stands to benefit in any financial way from a given book or article being published. Series and journal editors and authors are both unpaid, though token fees are sometimes paid to peer reviewers as a gesture of thanks for their time. Such fees are small and do not depend on any given verdict being reached.

Financial conflicts thus do not occur, but more personal conflicts can. For example, a member of an editorial committee may be related to, or be a close friend of, a potential author. In such cases, committee members recuse themselves from all discussion of a proposal. Where the chair of a committee has a conflict, a deputy takes over. In online or physical meetings of the editors, members with any conflict absent themselves while business is done, and do not witness the discussion.

Any allegations of plagiarism or other authorial misconduct are handled in line with Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines.