Terms and Conditions
These Terms and Conditions ("Terms") govern the purchase of publication and related services offered through the website at scholarpublishing.org and all its subdomains, and through related email communication, by Scholar Publishing UK, Brooklands Road, Birmingham, B28 8JP, United Kingdom ("Scholar Publishing UK", "we", "us", "our").
By registering with the Website, submitting an article, or purchasing any service, you ("Customer", "you", "your") accept these Terms. Any of your own terms that differ from these Terms do not apply unless we confirm them in writing. The Terms of Use and the Privacy Policy form an integral part of these Terms.
1. About us and our services
Scholar Publishing UK is an open-access publisher offering scientific publication and editorial services, including peer review, editing, production and open-access dissemination of accepted articles across our journals. Services may be ordered by the Customer through the Website.
We do not issue a separate contract document. You can view the services you have ordered and the status of your article at any time through your personal account on the Website.
2. Registration and eligibility
- To order a service, you must first register with the Website.
- To register, you must be of full age and have full legal capacity.
- You are responsible for providing accurate registration and contact details and for keeping your account credentials secure.
3. Formation of the contract
- A request to contract our publication and editorial services is made at the moment you submit an original scientific article ("Article") for peer review and possible publication.
- Submission and peer review do not guarantee acceptance. A binding contract for publication arises only when we notify you that your Article has been accepted for publication.
- By submitting, you agree to open-access publication of your Article and to payment of the applicable Article Processing Charge (APC), which becomes payable only after your Article is accepted (see Section 5).
4. Our Services
We provide editorial and open-access publication services for accepted scholarly articles (and, where offered, related services such as book publishing). The service delivered upon acceptance and payment is the professional handling, production and permanent open-access publication of your Article under a Creative Commons licence (see Section 7).
5. Prices, currency and payment
- The APC and any other service prices are those stated on our Article Publishing Charges page. The price applied to an accepted Article is the price in effect on the date of its original submission.
- An invoice is issued by email to your nominated payment contact shortly after acceptance. Payment is due within 5–10 days of the invoice date.
- We accept payment by credit/debit card (Visa, Mastercard) and PayPal. Card payments are processed securely through our payment gateway, CardNet.
- No submission fee is charged; the APC is the only charge for standard publication, save for any additional services you expressly order.
6. Discounts and waivers
Discounts may apply to authors affiliated with institutions enrolled in our Institutional Open Access Programme (IOAP) and may be offered to reviewers. In exceptional cases we may grant discounts or waivers at our discretion; we reserve the right to decline a discount or waiver without giving reasons.
7. Manuscript, copyright and licensing
- Your Article is accepted for processing on the understanding that it is original, has not been published elsewhere and is not under consideration by another journal. Material previously disclosed at a conference is permitted, provided you inform us at submission.
- For multi-author papers, you confirm that all authors are familiar with and agree to the contents. We may contact all authors to verify this. Please provide an email address for every author, at least one institutional email address, and the name, address and email for invoicing.
- If your manuscript reproduces material from other publications, you must obtain and provide proof of the necessary permissions. See Author Guidelines.
- Accepted Articles are published as open access under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) Licence. Authors retain copyright. The following note is added to the published text: "© [year] by the authors; licensee Scholar Publishing UK. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) Licence."
8. Cancellation, withdrawal and refunds
- Your right to withdraw before acceptance: You may withdraw your Article and cancel your intention to contract at any time during peer review, at no charge. Once an Article has been accepted, it may not be withdrawn by you.
- Our right to decline: We may decline or reject an Article at any time before publication without giving reasons. On such cancellation, both parties are released from further obligations under these Terms, and any service fees already paid will be refunded in full.
- Overpayments: If you pay more than the invoiced amount, we will refund the excess; any bank or transaction charges arising from the refund will be deducted from the amount refunded.
- After publication: Once an Article has been published, refunds are made only in exceptional circumstances and are decided case by case.
- Full details are set out in our Return, Refund and Cancellation Policy, which forms part of these Terms.
9. Payments and card security
- Card payments are handled by our payment service provider, CardNet, over a secure, encrypted connection.
- Scholar Publishing UK does not store full card details on its own servers; card data is processed by the payment gateway in accordance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS).
- Your payment information is used solely to process the transaction and is handled in accordance with our Privacy Policy.
- If a payment is declined or reversed, we may suspend the associated service until payment is completed.
10. Delivery and fulfilment of services
Upon acceptance and receipt of the APC, your Article is edited, produced and published as an open-access article, and is assigned a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) for permanent citation. Accepted articles may be published online ahead of issue assignment through our Online First service.
As all services are digital and delivered through publication on the Website, there is no physical shipment.
11. Governing law and jurisdiction
- These Terms are governed exclusively by the laws of England and Wales.
- The courts of Birmingham, United Kingdom, shall have jurisdiction over any dispute arising out of or in connection with these Terms, even where the Customer is domiciled outside the United Kingdom.
- Nothing in these Terms affects any statutory rights you may have as a consumer that cannot be excluded by law.
12. General
- If any provision of these Terms is found to be invalid or unenforceable, the remaining provisions continue in full force. The parties will replace any invalid provision with a valid one that reflects the original intention as closely as possible.
- We may amend these Terms at any time by posting the revised version on this page. Please review this page periodically. Your continued use of any service after changes are posted constitutes acceptance of the revised Terms.
13. Contact
If you have any questions regarding these Terms, please contact us at:
Scholar Publishing UK
Brooklands Road, Hall Green
Birmingham B28 8JP, United Kingdom
Email: office@scholarpublishing.org