Our Policies

To a significant extent, Litwin Books and Library Juice Press are an open-access publisher. Our journal, JCLIS, is Gold OA with no author fees. On the book publishing side, contributors to edited collections maintain full rights to their work – to upload to institutional repositories with no embargo period; to share with colleagues; to use in teaching or presentations; to republish in any form; and anything else covered under their original copyright. Our publication of their work is on a non-exclusive basis. Authors or editors of books have more limited rights, but their terms are partially open access. Our contracts give us temporary exclusive publication rights that renew automatically, with authors having the option to bring the book out of print if desired after a set time period. We also grant authors an immediate right to use their work in teaching and presentations, to produce derivative works, and for all their professional and scholarly activities.

The JCLIS journal is blind peer reviewed. Our book publishing does not currently have a peer review process in place. Generally speaking, peer review in academic book publishing has always been geared more toward evaluating book proposals for the marketplace than strict maintenance of academic standards, as you may have found if you have been enlisted as a reviewer by a book publisher. Being a small niche publisher as a member of a community of readers and authors, we are able to make sound judgments in an informal way, considering our role in that community as a facilitator and supporter as well as a gatekeeper.

As an academic publisher whose books are purchased by individuals as well as academic libraries, we try to price our books affordably. Our books are normally paperback only, with prices that are typically around half to two-thirds what other LIS publishers charge. Books that are intended for a wider readership have lower prices than that, in order to meet the expectations of the trade market.

We try to be as green as we can given a balance between affordability and environmental sustainability. When possible, our printer uses sustainably-sourced paper, and provides us with sustainability certification information. All our books are printed on acid-free paper.

In terms of our labor practices, we primarily employ contractors who work for us at a professional level as freelancers. We aim to compensate for the lack of benefits involved in this kind of arrangement by paying our contractors adequately. We do it this way for flexibility – ours and theirs. Due to the nature of our business, it is not possible to maintain full-time staff to do editing, proofreading, layout, indexing, cover design, e-book preparation, conference support, or other tasks that are dependent on publishing cycles. It is helpful to be able to hire specialists for these kinds of tasks. When we have used interns, we have paid them fairly.

Feel free to contact us with questions about these policies or anything we have neglected to mention.