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The scholarly publishing process is often depicted as a lifecycle moving from research, writing, and peer review to dissemination, discovery, and preservation. Within this lifecycle are numerous other crucial steps that add value and quality to any publication, especially editing, design, and production. At Virginia Tech Publishing (VTP) we can assist in any and all steps of the publishing process. We offer services tailored to a variety of formats including books and textbooks as well as journals, reports, and white papers. We also welcome opportunities to work with emerging media formats. Our subject scope reflects the broad range of disciplinary strengths of Virginia Tech including arts & humanities, social sciences, and STEM fields. As a member of the Library Publishing Coalition, we share the LPC’s vision of a scholarly publishing landscape that is open, inclusive, and sustainable. Whenever possible, our publications are free to read online or can be freely downloaded from our website. We strive to make everything we publish accessible to people with disabilities. As a digital-first publisher, we do not hold physical inventory, so if a print edition is called for, we offer it through a third party (e.g. Amazon) and, in the interest of affordability, we do not collect any of the sales revenue.
Our journals program dates back to 1991 and our first electronic-only, open access journal, The Journal of the International Academy of Hospitality Research. Today our active journals treat subjects from across the humanities, life sciences, engineering, and technology studies. Several are edited by Virginia Tech undergraduate and graduate students. We are open to adding journals in new subject areas that reflect emerging strengths of the university. Please contact us if you wish to either a) create a new open access journal or b) transition an existing journal from subscription-based to open access. We can assist with everything from crafting an initial proposal and mission statement to developing editorial policies and production workflows.
VTP is committed to following the editorial practices detailed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) as set forth in the COPE guidelines.
VTP allows each journal to determine its own copyright and licensing policy, although we strongly encourage that individual authors be permitted to retain their rights while giving the journal non-exclusive rights. All of our journals are openly licensed, using one of the licenses available from Creative Commons.
Each journal determines its peer review process and the qualifications of its peer reviewers. Most VTP journals have a blind peer review process that is set forth on each journal’s website. Non-peer reviewed content within peer reviewed journals is clearly identified.
Most VTP journals are not fee-based. That is, authors are not required to pay an Article Processing Charge (APC) to publish in the journal. However, in 2019 we launched our first APC-based journal, Studies in Engineering Education (SEE), as part of a broader effort to expand the scale of our journals program by testing a different business model. We are open to considering other APC-based journals.
For questions regarding journals, please contact Corinne Guimont: gcorinne@vt.edu.
The Virginia Tech Libraries published its first open textbook in 2016. Today the Open Education Initiative supports Virginia Tech faculty who are interested in authoring or adapting non-traditional, open educational resources and new forms of digital scholarship as alternatives to traditional textbooks and homework software access codes. Faculty are invited to apply for competitive grants of up to $3,000.
The Open Education Initiative (OEI) is a program of the Scholarly Communication department of the University Libraries. Funded and operated separately, the OEI supports development, adaptation, and adoption of open educational resources. The OEI maintains a collaborative working relationship with Virginia Tech Publishing, relying on VTP for copyediting coordination and use of the VTP Imprint for qualified publications.
Additional literature on open educational resources and example projects are available in the Open Education Libguide. For complete information on the Open Education Initiative Grants, please download the Grants Information document. To apply visit the online application. For more information about support for open textbooks contact Anita Walz: arwalz@vt.edu.
VTP publishes a variety of “long-form” and “short-form” works by Virginia Tech faculty and students. These include single-author books, edited volumes, reports, and white papers. We partner with academic departments, centers, and institutes to publish individual works or ongoing series. For more information contact Corinne Guimont (gcorinne@vt.edu) or Caitlin Bean (cbean2021@vt.edu).
While monographs are not a central focus of our publishing program, Corinne and Caitlin regularly consult with faculty, staff, and students (one on one or in groups) about writing monographs and placing them with appropriate presses. In addition, faculty members can apply for subventions to support publication of monographs with scholarly publishers as part of a collaborative effort involving the Provost’s Office, the University Libraries, and academic colleges. Virginia Tech is also a member of the TOME Initiative. For more information on book publishing subventions, click here or contact Corinne Guimont (gcorinne@vt.edu).
We have been expanding our capacity to support members of the Virginia Tech community who use digital tools and platforms (e.g. Omeka, WordPress, PressBooks) in their scholarship and pedagogy. We offer classes as well as one-on-one training, and in 2021 we launched a pilot project with Reclaim Hosting (VT Domains) to offer web hosting on a limited basis to students for use as “sandboxes” in Virginia Tech courses.
From these partnerships come projects that are collaborative, largely web based, often interactive, always born-digital, and often manifest as digital arts and humanities projects. Examples include online, peer-reviewed scholarship, podcasts, digital exhibits, and video shorts that stand alone or support existing, more traditional VTP partnerships and publications.
For more information on VT Domains and digital scholarship contact Corinne Guimont (gcorinne@vt.edu) and for more on podcasts and other media production services contact Joe Forte (joeforte@vt.edu).
In addition to the services described above, our team frequently consults with faculty and students who have general questions about publishing, and we offer a variety of specialized services including:
For more information on who to contact, see the Our Team page.
Established in 2017 in partnership with the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences (CLAHS), Athenaeum is a suite of rooms on the first floor of Newman Library dedicated to cultivating and supporting Digital Humanities (DH) teaching, learning, research, and publication at Virginia Tech.
Athenaeum is a place where faculty and students from CLAHS can collaborate with librarians and technology specialists to plan classes, activities, and events devoted, in one way or another, to DH topics.
In all Athenaeum activities we work with our partners to strike a balance between hands-on, experiential enterprises such as developing podcasts or mixed-media web publications and more traditional scholarly activities such as seminars and speaker series featuring DH scholars of local, regional, national, and international renown.
The Athenaeum suite is flexible, dynamic, and ever-evolving in its capabilities and the breadth of its purview. If you wish to tour the suite or consult with Joe Forte, the Athenaeum Coordinator and Digital Humanities Specialist, you may contact him at: joeforte@vt.edu.