A book is a long investment of a scholar's life, and we treat it accordingly. From the moment a title joins our list, the press gives it the identifiers, the indexing, and the care that let it be found, read, and cited anywhere in the world. This page sets out, plainly and completely, what every book we publish receives.

Identifiers that last

  • A Canadian ISBN for every edition. Each format of the book, print and digital, carries its own ISBN issued through ISBN Canada at Library and Archives Canada. The book is registered as a Canadian publication from a Canadian press.
  • A DOI through Crossref. The open edition receives a Digital Object Identifier, the same permanent identifier used by the world's scholarly journals, so every citation of the book resolves to it for as long as the scholarly record exists.
  • Complete, accurate metadata. Title, contributors, abstract, subjects, licence, and identifiers are prepared once, carefully, and supplied to libraries, catalogues, and databases in the forms they expect.

A place in Canada's national record

As a Canadian publisher we deposit every title with Library and Archives Canada under legal deposit. The book enters the national collection of Canada, appears in the national catalogue, and is preserved there permanently. Few honours available to a book are as durable as this one.

Open access to the whole world

  • Free to read, everywhere. The digital edition is published in open access under a Creative Commons licence agreed with the author. Anyone, in any country, can read, download, and share the book at no cost, and the licence printed in the book makes the terms plain.
  • No paywall, ever. No reader pays and no library needs a subscription, which is precisely why open books travel so much further than closed ones.
  • A printed edition as well. Titles suited to print are made available in print on demand and can be ordered through major international book channels by readers, bookshops, and libraries.

Indexing where scholars actually look

  • The Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB). We list our open titles with DOAB, the reference index through which libraries and discovery systems worldwide find peer-reviewed open access books.
  • Google Scholar and Google Books. We prepare and submit each book so that it can be found through the search tools researchers and students turn to first.
  • Library catalogues and WorldCat. Through legal deposit, print distribution, and library records, the book's record reaches the union catalogues, including WorldCat, where librarians around the world look.
  • Open aggregators. The open edition is exposed to the harvesting services that gather open scholarship for universities, and increasingly for AI-assisted search.

The standing of a reviewed book

  • Independent peer review. Every book is read by independent scholars before acceptance, double blind, and the review of each title is documented openly following PRISM, so libraries and indexes can verify how the book was examined.
  • A Canadian institutional imprint. The book appears under the press of a not-for-profit research institute incorporated in Canada, guided by an editorial board of scholars, and that standing travels with the book wherever it goes.
  • Ready-made citations. The book's page offers formatted citations in APA, MLA, Chicago, and Harvard, copied in one click, so citing the work is effortless.

Preservation beyond any single website

Legal deposit preserves the book in the national collection of Canada, and we deposit the open edition for long-term digital preservation, so the text survives independently of the press's own servers.

Care, presentation, and promotion

  • A bilingual home. The book has a permanent page on the press portal in English and Arabic, with its cover, description, contributors, identifiers, and links to read or order it.
  • Announcement through the Institute's network. New titles are announced on the Institute's sites, in its newsletter, and at its conferences and events.
  • The author is honoured. The author is named on every edition, rights are set out in a clear written agreement, and translated works credit the original publisher.

All of it at no cost to the author

We charge no fee for acceptance or publication, and the decision to publish is kept entirely separate from money. For translated works, the CIMEGS translation grant can cover the translation and editing in full. See our Fees policy and the Translation Grant.

If this is the home you want for your book, send us a proposal. The editorial team reads every one.