University of London Press

Peer review procedure

The following information and links can also be found at https://www.sas.ac.uk/publications/publish-with-us

University of London Press currently publishes on behalf of the nine institutes of the School of Advanced Study, University of London. Different institutes and series have different peer review requirements, which are outlined below. For more information about any of these requirements, please contact the relevant institute. In general, the peer review process works as follows:

  1. Proposals are considered by the relevant editorial board, director or head of publications for each institute. If the proposal is of interest, at least two reviewers are asked if they would be willing to report on it. For proposals, we ask that reports be returned within a month; for manuscripts, reviewers are asked to report within two to three months. However, it can take longer than this due to the need to find suitable and available reviewers, and the length of the submission. The review process can therefore take anything up to six months.
  2. The anonymised reports are sent to the authors or editors for their comments. If the reports are negative, or the institute decides not to contract the book, then the submission is declined for publication at this stage.
  3. Authors/editors then make any necessary revisions to their work and resubmit a final manuscript, which is then assessed by the editorial board/director/head of publications of the relevant institute, who take the final decision on whether to publish the book. At this stage contracts are issued and the manuscript is passed to the Publications production team.

Peer review policies for individual series:

Institute of Advanced Legal Studies

Institute of Classical Studies

Human Rights Consortium

Institute of Commonwealth Studies

See the institute site for more details

Institute of English Studies

See the institute site for more details

Institute of Historical Research

An initial assessment of the suitability of a proposal for the series will be carried out by the IHR’s editorial team, with further evaluation undertaken by the Publications Board. The most promising proposals will then be sent to external referees for peer review. The final decision about whether to recommend publication will be made by the Publications Board, in light of the referees’ reports. It is highly unlikely that all papers delivered at a conference will be suitable for inclusion. It is, therefore, expected that editors will have exercised a degree of peer review before the submission of their proposal. Editors should have reviewed all the papers identified for inclusion in their volume and they should demonstrate the reason(s) for the selection of particular contributions over others.

Institute of Latin American Studies

Information on peer review

Institute of Modern Languages Research

Warburg Institute

Exceptions to peer review

The following types of work are not peer reviewed:

  • Publications of individual lectures (for example the Hilda Hulme Lecture Series), or of abstracts of seminars (for example the Mycenaean Seminars)
  • Re-publications of previously published work (for example Women and the Law)