Scholarly Communications

• Find books on similar topics. Consider looking at the publishers of books that you have cited in your work, as those publishers are likely to be familiar with publication in your subject area. 
• Search for book reviews published by reputable journals in your field and find out which publishers are publishing those books.
• Ask colleagues, professors, and other researchers within your field about which publishers they have published a book with recently and what their experience was with the publisher. 
• Always review a publisher's website for their policies and to ensure that they are not a vanity press or predatory publisher before submitting your work for publication. 

Commercial publishers are companies which focus solely on publishing books that are commercially available for purchase. These publishers do not charge fees to authors for publication and typically provide substantial quality-control measures, such as peer- or editorial-review. Commercial publishers are considered reputable and are ideal for academic careers. 

Vanity presses or print-on-demand publishers are not commercial or academic publishers and are often not considered reputable in academic careers. Some may also be considered predatory publishers. Here are some characteristics that may help to spot vanity presses.

• Few quality-control measures, including a lack of editorial feedback or peer-review process. This results in the publication of lower quality work.
• Often will charge authors a fee for publishing their work.
• May refer to themselves as Joint Venture Publishers or Partnership Publishers. This refers to the idea that the author is an equal partner in the publishing process and is an attempt to justify the charging of author fees. 
• Books or monographs published by vanity presses are often not available to purchase through reputable booksellers. 

Publishing with a vanity press may result in considerable financial cost, loss of copyright to your work, and damage to your academic reputation.