About

Overview

The Journal of Electronic Publishing is an open access journal that publishes research about contemporary scholarly and digital publishing issues and practices. At its inception in January 1995, JEP carved out an important niche by recognizing that print communication was in the throes of significant change, and that digital communication would become an important—and in some cases predominant—means for transmitting published information. Since then scholarly communication has squarely entered the digital realm, but continues to negotiate media change, new business and publishing models, the ongoing consolidation of the publishing industry, longstanding issues of unequal access and epistemic injustice, and different perspectives on what the future of scholarly communication and digital publishing could and should be. JEP seeks to engage with theorists and practitioners on these issues in relation to the past, present, and future of publishing, especially in the academic world.

In doing so, JEP aspires to document changes in scholarly communication broadly and publishing more specifically, and to provoke and shape the direction of those changes. The journal aims to become a platform to rigorously interrogate the intellectual, political, and ethical implications of new forms of publishing, to closely monitor developments in the publishing industry, and to continuously reflect on the role of publishing and publishing institutions in the wider scholarly communication landscape. Articles published in JEP present cutting-edge thinking and theory, creative proposals and new ideas, and experimental practices about all aspects of scholarly communication, including writing, reading, and publishing.

Vision Statement

We see the Journal of Electronic Publishing as a vehicle for exploring timely, relevant, interesting, and rigorous ideas about scholarly communication in the 21st century. Taking a broad scope, we want to highlight matters of interest across the JEP community and from various regions, career levels, and disciplines. JEP will be open in the many nuances of that word: open to read and submit to, certainly, as a diamond open access publication, but also open to proposals about the form and format of scholarly communication; to interventions from newcomers to the field of scholarly publishing; and to writing that pushes against the status quo.

Stepping into our roles as the new co-editors of JEP, we are asking ourselves and the entire JEP community: what do we want the future of scholarly publishing to be? How do we take an active role in shaping that future, instead of reacting to corporate-led decisions and initiatives that dominate the current scholarly communication landscape? How do we, as publishing scholars, students, instructors, librarians, and activists work together to build and share our ideas for a more inclusive, creative, resilient, and equitable academic publishing world?

Together, we can work to ensure that JEP becomes a platform for us all to rigorously interrogate the intellectual, political, and ethical implications of new forms of publishing, as well as to closely monitor developments in the publishing industry. In doing so, we will continuously reflect on the role of publishing and publishing institutions in the wider scholarly communication landscape and collectively experiment with the various horizons of the publishable. Thank you for joining us in this mission.

Editors

The co-editors, Dr. Janneke Adema and Dr. Alyssa Arbuckle, and the publisher, the University of Michigan Press, are committed to presenting wide-ranging and diverse viewpoints on contemporary publishing practices and the future of publishing.

As of July 1 2023, editorial direction of JEP is the responsibility of the co-editors, Janneke Adema (Associate Professor, Digital Media, Coventry University) and Alyssa Arbuckle (Co-Director, Electronic Textual Cultures Lab, University of Victoria).  See our editors page for more information about the editorial and production staff involved with JEP.

Policies

Peer Review

JEP publishes peer reviewed articles and book reviews. Generally, articles undergo double anonymized peer review, but special issues may pursue different forms of peer review in consultation with the editors and editorial team. Reviewers are carefully selected and invited by JEP’s editors and the selection process considers required expertise, equity concerns, and the absence of competing interests. If you are interested in peer reviewing for JEP, please send an email to jep-info@umich.edu.

Author Charges

JEP does not charge author processing charges or submission fees.

Copyright and Licensing

Authors retain full rights to their article and grant JEP and its publisher, Michigan Publishing, the non-exclusive right to distribute the work and make the work available in perpetuity. This ensures that authors have the ability to publish and distribute their work elsewhere, in print or digitally, if necessary.

Authors select the license applied to their published article. However, JEP strongly endorses and encourages authors to select a Creative Commons Attribution license which helps ensure the work has the lowest barrier possible to its re-use.

If you are interested in using a JEP article outside of a stated license, please contact JEP staff at jep-info@umich.edu with your inquiry.

Submission Checklist

JEP is currently focusing on publishing special issues, if you want to submit an article to JEP, please see our current Calls for Papers here: https://journals.publishing.umich.edu/jep/news/.

Each submission should include:

  • The e-mail address of the author to which readers can write if different from the e-mail address to be used by JEP's editors.
  • A narrative biography of each author, of no more than 125 words.
  • A short abstract of your article of no more than 300 words.
  • The URL of the author's personal home page, project or university department, and ORCID if available.

In addition, all DOIs, links to reference sources, examples, etc., should be checked twice. As of 2019, JEP requires that all published articles meet the basic digital accessibility standards for visual resources. Papers accepted for publication in JEP that publish visual assets (e.g. images) must include alt-text (or long descriptions) for each visual asset, as well as appropriate captions. For more information on the basic principles of describing visual resources for accessibility in arts and humanities publications, please visit Describing Visual Resources.org.

Footnotes and references: The Journal of Electronic Publishing uses The Chicago Manual of Style, Author-Date Style.

If you want to propose a submission that falls outside our current Call for Papers, or if you want to suggest a proposal for a future special issue, please contact the editors directly at jep.editors@gmail.com.

Publication Ethics

JEP is committed to the highest ethical standards throughout its review and publication process. Reviews follow rigorous review guidelines and the review and editorial processes adhere to the Core Practices developed by the Committee on Publishing Ethics (COPE). JEP is not published for profit and its editorial decisions are not influenced by outside interests.

JEP welcomes submissions within the thematic scope of the journal regardless of authors’ institutional affiliation or career level. Decisions about submissions are made without regard to author race, gender, age, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy.

Journal Communications

The Journal of Electronic Publishing is an open access journal, free to all. You can follow us on Bluesky @jepub.bsky.social or on Mastadon at @JEPub or subscribe to our newsletter at http://eepurl.com/iudJOE.

Contact

Please send comments and questions about the Journal of Electronic Publishing to us at jep.editors@gmail.com.