Sticking to the Facts: An Academic Publishing Primer

By Emily Wright | From the January/February 2026 issue of Strings

In 1967, a literature review put forth by Harvard nutritionists was published in the New England Journal of Medicine, suggesting foods with a high percentage of fat shared a direct link to coronary disease. It takes time for academic ideas to disseminate throughout the zeitgeist, and by the late 1970s, dietary trends encouraged health-conscious shoppers to avoid “fattening” foods and instead, to find flavor elsewhere: in sugar. For decades, many people dutifully followed this guidance, which even made its way into government-backed suggested daily rations of nutrients and caloric sources. As reward, heart disease skyrocketed. What happened? As it turns out, early research showed strong correlations between heart disease and sugar. A lobbying group funded by sugar producers paid the Harvard folks to pick through the research and draw the focus away from the problems with sugar. The rest of us dined heartily on the lie for years, some never discovering the betrayal of public trust at all.

Could something similar happen today? How does one go about finding trustworthy information in this alleged age of information?A good place to start is academic publishing, where a high degree of diligence and sophisticated vetting processes push against the rising tide of misinformation that is often easier to access than the truth. After surveying a number of editors at university presses and authors whose work has made its way to print via such publishers, I’ve compiled a quick overview of how a manuscript becomes a published work and the various roles occupied by people responsible for assuring the integrity of its claims. 

Proposal

In most cases, an author will submit a proposal with the intention of securing a contract to be published. At this stage, the manuscript might be complete, though many authors will wait for feedback on the proposal and tailor the building out of the text accordingly. Proposals are usually sent to a subject-matter specialist editor, who will examine the ideas and compare them against current texts, with a few questions in mind. Is anything new being said? Where would this fit into the current market? What are the qualifications of the author? If the proposal seems promising—especially in a field where the publisher is looking to expand its footprint—they might commission an independent peer review of it. 

During this process, subject matter experts evaluate, sometimes anonymously, always independently, the methods and findings of an author. The output is usually one of three recommendations: that the work be accepted, accepted with modifications, or rejected. There are occasions where double blind peer review is called for, where the author, whose name has been embargoed, has no idea who the reviewer is.

Assuming the peer review is successful, the author will be asked to respond to the review with changes and/or additions. Not every suggestion needs to be taken, but there is an expectation that the author will thoughtfully engage with the feedback.

However, this is in the case of a successful proposal. The vast majority of all proposals (even very good ones) are rejected. University presses are on the receiving end of a veritable firehose of proposals, and authors are sometimes faced with long periods of waiting, even for a rejection. Every person I spoke to had roughly the same guidance for prospective writers: have a few colleagues informally review your work, then submit your best effort to a handful of outfits, and wait. Spraying the publishing ecosystem with a proposal, even a compelling one, might work against the end goal: There are limited numbers of subject-matter experts who can serve as peer reviewers. For ethical reasons, most will not agree to offer comment on the same manuscript for different publishers. The road to successful publication is paved with work, waiting, and a generous helping of the words “no” and “try again.”

Acceptance and Production

Now that the acquiring editor has accepted the proposal, the march to publication gets underway. The details of this central phase depend upon the size of the publishing house. Bear in mind, multitasking is the order of the day at any publisher, and job titles often obscure the absolute mountain of responsibilities the holder bears. 

For our purposes, here’s what it looks like at a larger-scale operation: Editorial assistants are responsible for a broad range of administrative and editorial tasks at this stage, and are sometimes the point of liaison between the author and the rest of the team. At some presses, the main contact will be the project editor, who is also deeply immersed in the nuts and bolts of style and word choice along with consistency in tone. Meetings are set, a digital record of the project is created, schedules and timelines are created to give everyone involved a set of shared expectations.

Next, the copy editor—who is often hired externally by the author—makes adjustments or suggestions to enhance clarity, flow, and cadence, along with proofreading for basics of spelling and grammar. At any time in this process, additions or modifications made by the author might trigger another round of layered editing by multiple people.

Once the text is complete, it must be indexed. An index is a tool for the reader, a compilation of concepts discussed in the text, organized so relevant information can be found quickly. Who performs this step comes down to a combination of publisher preference and which style guide is being followed. This is an incredibly detail-oriented process, and professional indexers are sought after for their ability to quickly (this phase of production is nearly always short on time) ascertain who the audience is and how they’ll use the text.

At the same time, the art department or cover designer submits drafts that capture the desired aesthetics of the author in a way that is visually cohesive and appropriate for the market. As each round of checking, re-checking, and massaging wraps up, the production manager oversees the disparate completed elements and coordinates with each department to keep things moving on time.

How quickly a text is brought to market depends largely on the state of the manuscript at the time of submission. A straightforward monograph—a highly focused treatise—without images or music examples has a relatively quick preproduction stage, but for some books, it is possible for the postsubmission period to be characterized by a lot of back and forth confirmations between the author and the project editor, or the author and permissions holders, before anything can move forward. 

To Market, to Market

Once released, a publisher has an array of tools to help a book reach the right readers. Finding reviewers is essential, sort of bookending (pun not intended) the independent input prevalent throughout the process, lending an additional layer of vetting external to the project. Conferences, too, are an ideal venue to connect a new work with a highly specialized audience, and of course, digital marketing is critical. In the last 30 years, new avenues have emerged, and scholars can interact directly with a global audience via podcast interviews, livestreamed discussions, and social media.

At heart, the purpose of an academic publication is to contribute to the body of human knowledge in an effort to articulate what we know, corroborated by evidence of how we know. When looking for truth in the complex information environment we find ourselves in, be discerning and brave. Facts may not always bring comfort, but it is better to be open to an uncomfortable truth than to build an outlook on facile, unexamined myth. For, as Hilary Mantel wrote in Wolf Hall, “It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.”

Predatory Publishing

At its best, academic publishing can be seen in noble terms—qualified teams of discerning editors taking pains to promote only the most factual, nuanced, clearly articulated thinking available. For outsiders, however, the barriers to entry sometimes leave would-be authors casting about for alternative spaces to put forward their ideas. This dynamic has given rise to predatory publishing, an umbrella term for practices a journal or press of dubious distinction undertakes to dump incomplete, specious, or outright mendacious ideas into the corpus for financial or reputational gain. 

The prevalence of scam publishers is especially high in the open access journal arena, but it exists in the world of books too. Authors will receive offers to serve on editorial boards with esteemed colleagues or are pushed hard for an expedient publishing date. Meanwhile, those esteemed colleagues are unaware their names are attached to the shady project, and authors are frequently hit with astronomical article fees they are made aware of only after acceptance. Thankfully, recent efforts to create whitelists are pushing back against predatory publishing, with some success.                         —EW