We are delighted to be publishing your work
The information below has been prepared to assist you in writing your chapter and preparing it for submission.
It is important that you also review the other sections in the Author Hub as they provide a great deal of information and advice on copyright and other legal issues, EEP house style, the publication process and reuse of your work.
Please also keep in touch with your book editor, they will be your main contact throughout the writing and submission process. They will be able to advise you how to submit your chapter to them as well as other vital information such as length, reference style and deadlines.
Word count
Take account of the word count stipulated by your editor. The chapter should not exceed the agreed length. Figures and tables should be included in the word count with each figure counting as 500 words and each table as 300 words.
Delivery date
If you think you may miss this, then please contact your editor as soon as possible to discuss the implications.
Please also be aware that this deadline refers to delivery of the whole chapter and that it won’t be possible to make more than very minor changes to the files once you have delivered them. We need to receive all the chapters at one time so be aware that if you are late in delivering your material you will be delaying the whole book.
Consistency of style and formatting across chapters
Please check with your editor which referencing style you should use.
If your editor has provided you with a list of spelling conventions and/or other style instructions please adhere to it. It will improve the readability of the book if it looks like a coherent whole.
If you are unsure about these points please check with your editor.
Contributor Agreement
This is a contractual agreement between you and the book’s editor. Please ensure that you sign the agreement and return it to your editor promptly.
How to maximise your readership and citations
Today readers and researchers discover books through a myriad of online search engines, websites, databases and indexes.
Please consider the key terms that you think interested readers will use in literature searches and incorporate them into the chapter title, abstract and key words in an appropriate way. This will help researchers find your work and increase readership and citations.
Your chapter title
Researchers using online databases often first discover a chapter of a book before discovering the book itself. The chapter title should make sense in isolation. For example, it is better to have ‘Introduction to Small Business Economics’ than merely ‘Introduction’ as the book’s first chapter.
A good chapter title is concise and gives a clear indication of what the chapter is about.
Chapter abstract, key words and ORCID
We require an abstract of up to 200 words and a list of up to 6 key words/terms for your chapter(s). This is a requirement for the chapter to be indexed by Google Scholar. This information is included in the book’s metadata and has an important impact on the visibility of individual chapters in online searches as well as the discoverability of the book as a whole.
For each chapter please supply a chapter specific abstract, keywords and the chapter author(s) ORCID number(s) at the head of the chapter file, following this format:
Title of chapter
Author names in full
Abstract: This is the abstract for Chapter X in this Made Up Book. It should feature no more than 200 words explaining the chapter, for readers, potential readers, librarians and other bookbuyers as well as for metadata purposes. The abstract should relate to this specific chapter and its content, scope and themes. Abstracts over length will be edited down by our copyeditors.
Keywords: Capital Letters; Semi-colon Separating Each Word/Phrase; Maximum of Six Words or Terms
Author ORCID i.d. numbers: please list these in the order of the author names above, separated by commas
Maths
Maths should be prepared using Word's Equation Editor software in your manuscript Word files. Using Word's Equation Editor software, the tools are already in the Word toolbar.
Distinguish carefully between superior and subscript characters and use italic type for any characters to be set in italic. Equations should be numbered consecutively within chapters. Please send a PDF of your chapter with maths so this shows clearly how the maths should look.
Figures, graphs, maps, photographs and AI generated images
Before including these, please think about what each is adding to the reader’s understanding of the material (particularly if you have taken photos yourself). A photograph that does not look entirely professional can cheapen the look and feel of the book. Over-use of figures and photos can be distracting to the overall message.
Figures, graphs, maps and photographs that you submit to us must adhere to the following criteria. This ensures that the images that we publish in our books are legible, professional and of high quality.
We may have no option but to remove figures, graphs, maps and photographs that do not adhere to the 7 criteria below:
1. Do not copy and paste your figure into a Word document, instead provide them as a separate file in their original format.
- Copying and pasting images into Word files immediately reduces their quality.
2. They must be submitted as an EPS, PNG, PDF or JPEG file. We will also accept Excel documents, Powerpoint and Illustrator files.
- We cannot accept any other formats, so please ensure that your figures, graphs, maps and photographs are saved accordingly
Acceptable formats for figures |
Unacceptable formats for figures |
High-resolution PDF EPS PNG Excel JPEG Illustrator Powerpoint TIFF |
Screenshots Figures that have been copied and pasted into a Word file Low-resolution PDF Any figures that are of poor quality or contain illegible text or labeling |
3. They must be submitted in greyscale only and should be sharp, clear and legible.
- Any colour coding should be distinguishable in shades of black, grey and white. Different patterns could also be used to distinguish between different sections. Use only up to 5 shades of grey as a maximum.
4. They should be at least 300dpi (dots per inch).
- The resolution of an image is critical to its quality in print. Images of at least 300dpi are considered high resolution and will look better in print. Please refer to the hyperlinked flowchart below for more information.
5. Their location in the chapters must be clearly indicated. All figures, graphs, maps and photographs must be given a title, number and caption. Please also ensure you acknowledge the source and make any necessary acknowledgments.
- Simply indicate a point in the chapters where the figure should appear. Most of our authors write ‘INSERT FIGURE x.x HERE’ in a large font. They must be numbered consecutively within chapters. The first number refers to the chapter number and the second to that figure's appearance within the chapter.
6. Photographs must not include recognisable faces of any person/persons unless prior permission has been obtained.
- GDPR restrictions clearly state that reproducing the image of a person without their permission is against the law. As such, we cannot reproduce these photographs in our books.
7. AI generated images - If you wish to include AI generated images in your chapter(s) there are some issues you need to bear in mind.
- Please check the terms of service of the AI platform to ensure you have the right to use the image commercially. The quality of AI generated images is often inferior to what we would usually require. There are often errors within such images e.g. incorrect flag details and distortions of objects, people and backgrounds which can be misleading and are far more apparent than they may at first appear on screen. Please advise us if any of the images in your manuscript are AI generated.
Copyright
Please refer to the Elgar copyright policy carefully regarding figures and photographs. Permission may be required.
Reading software
Partially sighted or blind readers may use screen reading software to read the text of our books and will not be able to interpret figures or photos. If the figure is not explained adequately in the body text of the chapters please provide a short description of the figure that we can embed behind the figure in the ebook version as Alt Text.
Hyperlinks and Link-Rot
Live hyperlinks can be included in the ebook version of your book if the links are present in your submitted Word files. The easiest way to create a basic hyperlink in Word is to press ENTER or the SPACEBAR after you type the address of an existing webpage, such as www.e-elgar.co.uk. Word then automatically converts the address into a link. For more detailed information please click on the following link: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/create-or-edit-a-hyperlink-5d8c0804-f998-4143-86b1-1199735e07bf
If you are concerned about link-rot (when links change, for various reasons and no longer point to the original or intended page/file) there are systems available which allow for future-proofing of your links. We would suggest you discuss the options with your librarian, who will know your institutional arrangements. 'Perma' is one such service and is free for academic use. Perma provides a new URL which you would use in the chapter to ensure that the record will be available regardless of the change to any web address/site.
For more information see: https://perma.cc/libraries.
EEP has no affiliation with Perma.cc
Manuscript delivery
Deliver your files directly to your book editor, as the editor will wish to make their own checks and may wish to review the material before they collate the chapters and submit them to us.
Ensure that you have finished work on the chapter before you contemplate delivery of the material to your editor.
Your book editor needs to deliver all the material to be included in the book to Elgar at the same time. Once they have passed the files to us there will be no opportunity to make changes to the text other than to make minor copy-editing corrections.
Copyright permissions
If any of your material is under copyright to a third party (including your own work) you will need to provide documentation to your book editor confirming permissions has been granted to reuse the material.
Please see our copyright guide in the Author Hub for more information on what material requires copyright permission.
Your name and affiliation/biography
All our edited books contain lists of contributors in a consistent format.
Please check with your editor on the convention they have chosen, either:
- A brief affiliation only, or;
- a short biographical paragraph, ideally a maximum of 80 words long.
Please check that your name appears exactly as you would like it to appear in the book and in exactly the same format in your chapter file.