CTA: Criteria for co-publishing

Criteria for co-publishing

Co-publishing activities consist of serial co-publications, support to periodicals, stand-alone titles and book purchases. CTA began its co-publishing activities in 1985, and approximately 400 series and stand-alone titles have subsequently appeared. All types of book proposals, excluding theses ands research reports, are considered provided they relate to agriculture and rural development; preference is given to publications on any of the Centre's priority information themes. The main advantages to CTA of working with other publishers are:

access to extensive pre-publication and commercia] production facilities (CTA's own in-house production facilities are minimal), and
access to the publisher's distribution channels (CTA has not worked directly with booksellers and has had limited facilities for selling its own publications).

CTA's intervention has enabled a great many titles on agricultural development in ACP countries to get into print that would otherwise have been rejected on commercial criteria. It has also facilitated publication of the work of ACP authors, who might otherwise have found it difficult to find a publisher; and it is beginning to enable ACP publishers to gain experience and commercial opportunities through co-publication.

For these reasons, CTA will continue to maintain its extensive co-publishing programme. However, in future CTA will change the balance within the copublications programme in favour of increased ACP participation. This will mainly involve reducing budgetary allocations to co-publication with Northern publishers, whilst increasing the allocation to serial and stand-alone publications involving Southern partners.

The internal Publications Committee meets monthly to examine the diverse requests for co-publication support sent to CTA. The main criteria for the evaluating these requests continues to be:

their relevance to agriculture and rural development
thematic interest for ACP partners (re. priority information themes for the six ACP regions)
their cost-effectiveness and value for money
the extent of their geographical coverage
the technical level and style
the reliability of the technical and scientific content
the practicality of the information given
the extent to which the publication is innovative
the extent to which the information will remain valid after publication
the avoidance of duplication of existing publications.
preference for ACP authorship and publishers

To consider these proposals, CTA should receive the following information:

the proposed structure and table of contents of the book (if no manuscript is available)
sample chapter or complete manuscript, if available
information on the author(s)
target audience
views on the distribution
an itemised estimate of the production costs (mentioning the other potential partners)

The support which CTA gives to the proposals it accepts may involve financing translation, production and printing costs. It will also involve the distribution of a number of copies to CTA's subscribers on request.