Instructions to authors

(June 2020)

Brief presentation of the EUA

The Éditions Universitaires d'Avignon were founded in 2008 and now have more than seventy titles in their catalogue. They bear witness to the vitality and diversity of research at Avignon University and participate in the dissemination of knowledge by strengthening the links between the university and the city. They are an important player in the sharing of culture and knowledge in the Avignon area and beyond.

Within the institution, they are administratively attached to the university library and actively collaborate with the research and communication departments. At public events, the EUA's initiatives are part of the overall functioning of the university.

One catalogue, four collections

• Viewing Room includes the "Leçons de l'université", given by directors programmed at the Festival d'Avignon, and the "Grandes conférences" of the university;
• In-Games testifies to the research underway at Avignon University, through monographs and, above all, collective works;
• Passion for heritage presents up-to-date summaries of local and regional heritage for a wide audience;
• MidiSciences offers an enriched follow-up to the popularisation of scientific culture meetings programmed at Avignon University.

Digital dimension

The EUA is developing a number of digital-related areas:

• All collections will eventually be available on OpenEdition Books. Viewing Room was launched in October 2019.
• Coupled with this first dimension, the generation of digital books makes it possible to integrate specific environments, such as Kindle for Amazon or Kobo for Fnac. All EUA books will experience this dual dimension, print and digital, either retrospectively or on release.
• These digital publications open the door to the integration of the EUA in the catalogues of international scientific content providers such as Dawson or Ebsco.
• The EUA publishes a Research Notebook on the French scientific blogging platform Hypotheses.org, managed by OpenEdition (nearly two thousand visits per month). On the one hand, it is a question of facilitating the production of natively digital content; on the other hand, the EUA systematically promote their new works, most often by a specific contribution built with the authors (presentation text, unpublished documentation, audio interview, short videos...).

The EUA uses external service providers for technical operations (proofreading, page layout, encoding, printing). These interventions are a guarantee of quality and require the implementation of very tight production schedules.

The works are distributed by professional service providers: FMSH-Diffusion for printed works, OpenEdition and Immatériel for digital works. These collaborations once again imply a great deal of rigour in the management of schedules, as several months are necessary between the elaboration of the final manuscript and the publication.

Submission of the editorial project

Your project must be presented to the EUA, mainly to the director. This presentation can take the form of informal discussions, exchanges of emails; it is then formalised in a document, which can have a fairly free form, in order to respect the diversity of scientific expressions, but which must imperatively contain a text of 350 characters, spaces included, which will be, after intervention of the EUA, publicly disseminated during the announcement of the publication ("to be published").

The decision to publish is taken by the Director of the EUA, based on discussions with the editorial board, the editors of the series and the expertise of scientists from outside the institution.

At this stage, the dialogue allows the project to be specified in its scientific and editorial dimensions: choice of collection, complementarity of the Research Notebook, deposit in HAL - the French public research open archive - or Nakala - the French public research data warehouse.

Author, contributor contracts

In line with the specificity of academic publishing, authors are not paid. However, they are offered copies of printed works and a reduced selling price for subsequent copies. The EUA also facilitates all forms of promotion.

The EUA has systematised the use of contracts, drawn up on the basis of collaboration between university publishing structures and with the support of the Syndicat national de l'édition. These contracts are validated by Avignon University. Legally necessary, they facilitate the long-term exploitation of publications.

All authors of unpublished texts must sign a contract in order to be published. Authors of graphic elements (tables, images, maps, etc.) can be contracted as independent services.

Form of the manuscript

In addition to the spelling standards presented in another document, it seems necessary to highlight the following demands, which are essential for efficient management.

• Do not format your text beyond italics, superscripts or other usual marks.
• The manuscript must be written in a Unicode font (Times New Roman for example). The use of exotic fonts is prohibited.
• Accentuate capital letters, respect typographical rules.
• Qualify paragraphs using the styles predefined by your word processor (title, subtitle; titles 1,2,3...; quotation...).
• Do not intervene in the form of the text beyond these styles (no manual hyphenation, no manual page breaks, no manual tabbing, etc.), which will be reused by the EUA and our contractors.
• Do not use blank lines, unless it is significant, for example for a conclusion.
• Automatically number the pages of your manuscript, with continuous numbering from the first to the last page.
• Number footnotes continuously in the case of individual works; in the case of collective works, numbering should start again with each new contribution.
• Do not number your table of contents or your index(es).
• For ease of reading (receiving the reader properly into the book), use short titles for the book, chapters and sub-sections.
• Disable all tracking of changes.

The EUA can assist you in preparing your manuscript.

Iconography

All visual elements (photograph, map, table, drawing) must be separated from the manuscript. It is possible to indicate in the manuscript, by forcing the rules set out in the previous paragraph (for example by using a bright font colour), the desired location of the illustrations, bearing in mind that the final layout depends above all on the graphic design of the work as a whole. The name of the visual element should then be clearly indicated by mentioning the name of the file to which it corresponds.

You must guarantee that you have the rights to use these elements in print and digital form.

It is essential to have elements of high graphic quality, preferring native versions and favouring high definition files, i.e. an image resolution of 300 dpi. All documents must be credited: who is the author and what rights are associated with them (copyright, creative commons licence, public domain, etc.).

The EUA can help you with these issues.

Biographies

Upon submission of the manuscript, all authors must be presented in a succinct form, 500 characters including spaces as a maximum. These presentations may change during the editorial development of the book.

Grants

The EUA is attentive to the proposal for subsidies, which are becoming indispensable for large projects (large books, large amount of iconography, choice of colour for illustrations).

Tests

The authors, or book managers, will have to validate a final version of the manuscript. Then, after the layout work, they will have to give their approval for the version that will be sent to the printer and/or the digital platform. At this stage, only spelling corrections are allowed.

Promotion

Whether in commercial or open access form, the EUA is committed to ensuring high visibility for publications. Authors' involvement is essential, in various forms:

• scientific presentation of the book's place in its environment, for the distributor's representatives (1,000 characters including spaces);
• active participation in the elaboration of the Research Notebook promoting the book (additional unpublished text, iconographic or audiovisual document, account of the elaboration of the project, interview...);
• co-organisation of at least one public event upon publication (on campus or outside: bookshop, theatre, third place, other city than Avignon);
• transmission of lists of recipients of publication announcements, press services. Partial handling of these mailings.

The EUA makes itself available to facilitate long-term promotion, including sales tables at conferences and symposia.