RHS News

REF2021 and History: an overview

The Research Excellence Framework (REF), undertaken by the UK’s four HE funding bodies, provides a review and assessment of research in higher education. The results of the latest assessment (REF2021) were published on 12 May 2022.

To accompany publication of the results, Professor Mark Jackson and Professor Margot Finn — respectively chair and deputy chair of the History sub-panel for REF2021 — offer an overview of this latest review, its headline findings for History, and their reflections on disciplinary developments since REF2014.

Mark and Margot’s article reflects on some of the main processes and outcomes of the History sub-panel in its assessment of Outputs, Impact, and research Environments.

Fuller details will be provided in the Sub-panel and Main Panel D (Arts and Humanities) reports published later in May. Over the summer, REF will place further information in the public domain on its website. This will include the text of all submitted Impact Case Studies and Environment statements, providing extensive information about historical practice in the UK.

 

History at Goldsmiths

On 8 April Goldsmiths, University of London, announced a series of redundancies among academic and academic-related staff. Sixteen staff are included in this announcement. Five historians (covering 2.8 full-time teaching roles), along with the department’s administrator, are among those whose posts will end in July, unless alternative employment is found at the university.

We are extremely disappointed by this decision. Despite repeated representations from many organisations, including the Society, Goldsmiths is taking steps deeply damaging to the careers of individual historians. We now expect those affected to be fully supported by the University and all options considered, to retain the skills and expertise of as many people as possible.

Equally, as a national and international community of historians, we need now to support those colleagues who remain in post, and who will shape the future of History at Goldsmiths. As they and their colleagues have shown, Goldsmiths offers a unique and vital contribution to historical research and teaching—as part of the wider University of London and humanities education nationally.

For many History students, for many reasons, and from many parts of the UK, Goldsmiths offers—and will continue to offer—the best place to study and research.

We are sure many in the Society will join in providing what support we can to all colleagues at Goldsmiths, now and in the immediate future. We owe this to all History staff, as well as to the students they educate and the communities with whom they work.

The President and Council of the Royal Historical Society

 

Bowl with Enthroned Figure and Horsemen late 12th–early 13th century, Iran, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, public domain

Society elects 246 new Fellows, Associate Fellows, Members and Postgraduate Members

At its latest meeting on 4 February 2022, the RHS Council elected 55 Fellows, 52 Associate Fellows, 46 Members and 93 Postgraduate Members, a total of 246 people newly associated with the Society. We welcome them all.

The majority of the new Fellows hold academic appointments at universities, specialising in a very wide range of fields; but also include oral historians, geologists, teachers, journalists and editors. The Society is an international community of historians and our latest intake includes Fellows from Australia, Austria, China, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland and the United States.

The new Associate Fellows include not only early career historians in higher education but also historians with professional and private research interests drawn from the civil service, teaching, archives and libraries, museums and galleries, heritage and conservation, and journalism.

The new Members have a similarly wide range of historical interests, and include individuals employed in universities, and as curators, teachers, physicians, surgeons and local government officers – together with independent and community historians. Our new Postgraduate Members are studying for higher degrees in History, or related subjects,  at 39 different universities in the UK, Ireland, Australia, China, Germany, Kuwait and the United States. All those newly elected to the Fellowship and Membership bring a valuable range of expertise and experience to the Society.

February 2022 sees the admission of our second set of Associate Fellows and Postgraduate Members — two new membership categories introduced in late 2021. These changes to membership (about which you can read more here) enable more historians to join the fellowship, and facilitate more focused support for RHS members at the start of their careers.

New Fellows and Members are elected at regular intervals through the year. The current application round is open and runs to Monday 4 April 2022. Further details on RHS Fellowship and Membership categories (Fellow, Associate Fellow, Member and Postgraduate Member), the benefits of membership, deadlines for applications throughout 2022, and how to apply, are available here.

 

New RHS Fellows, elected February 2022

  • Stuart Anderson
  • Richard Ansell
  • Malcolm Atkin
  • Hester Barron
  • Elizabeth Biggs
  • Myra Bom
  • Antje Bosselmann Ruickbie
  • Toby Burrows
  • Ian Conrich
  • Elizabeth Crawford
  • John Curran
  • Peter Doyle
  • Anastasia Dukova
  • Sarah Dunstan
  • Andrew John Flack
  • John Flood
  • Emma Folwell
  • Charles Forrester
  • Jonathan Fruoco
  • Howard Fuller
  • Dai Gao
  • Joseph Harley
  • Marieke Hendriksen
  • John Hinks
  • Vicky Holmes
  • Kirsty Hooper
  • Robert Hopkins
  • Stuart Jennings
  • David Kohnen
  • Bill Leadbetter
  • Eric Lee
  • Tamsin Lewis
  • Jason Lim
  • Sarah Lynch
  • Alan Mayne
  • Elaine McGirr
  • Xueqin Mei
  • James Newman
  • Dorian (Dusty) Nicol
  • Wioletta Pawlikowska-Butterwick
  • Imogen Peck
  • Erin Peters
  • Adrian Phillips
  • Michael Reeve
  • George Roberts
  • Ian Sanders
  • Geoff Simpson
  • Benjamin Snook
  • Peter Speiser
  • Iain Taylor
  • Leah Tether
  • Rosa Vidal Doval
  • Shalva Weil
  • Beth Williamson
  • Richard Wragg

 

New RHS Associate Fellows, elected February 2022

  • Jak Allen
  • Amanda Callan-Spenn
  • Jasmine Calver
  • James Chetwood
  • Alexander Courtney
  • Katherine Davison
  • Jonathan Eaton
  • John Edwards
  • Hannah Elias
  • Laura Flannigan
  • Lynsey Ford
  • Duncan Frost
  • Albert Gallon
  • Andrew Graham
  • Tristan Griffin
  • Samuel Grinsell
  • Dorothy Halfhide
  • Lily Hawker-Yates
  • Christopher Heath
  • Stephen Huggins
  • Eloise Kane
  • Edward Keazor
  • Meg Kobza
  • Simon Lambe
  • David Lane
  • David Lees
  • Andrew Lind
  • Thomas Martin
  • Scott Meyer
  • Christopher Moore
  • Rachel Murphy
  • Robert Nantes
  • Maria Newbery
  • Doga Ozturk
  • Giuseppe Paparella
  • Vivek Pathak
  • Alison Pedley
  • Ellie Reid
  • Elisabeth Rolston
  • Louise Ryland-Epton
  • Iida Saarinen
  • Sheila Seymour
  • Sube Singh
  • Vaibhav Singh
  • Jeannette Strickland
  • Rowan Thompson
  • Vikram Visana
  • Anthony Wakeford
  • Kristy Warren
  • Paul Williams
  • David Worsley
  • Mingjie Xu

 

New RHS Members, elected February 2022

  • Conor Allcock
  • John Beech
  • Francis Calvert
  • Maria Carvalho
  • Salvador Claflin
  • Basil Cleveland
  • Xavier Cottier
  • Tim Cripps
  • Lauren Curry
  • Grace Egan
  • Stephen Evans
  • Jeremy Ganz
  • Chiu Gavin
  • Devan Green
  • Dylan Harrison
  • Angela Hatton
  • Ian Hawking
  • Kyle Hubert
  • Susan Ingmire
  • Steven Jenkins
  • Simay Karasakal
  • Thomas Kelsall
  • Andreas Koureas
  • Seann Macnamara
  • Elizabeth MacPherson
  • Jack Maskell
  • Luke McDonald
  • Calum Mercer
  • Mark Murawski
  • Ed Myatt
  • Patrick O’Shaughnessy
  • Junbin Pan
  • Praveen Pathak
  • Rachel Rowlands
  • Andrew Ruddle
  • Robert Senior
  • Declan Sheehan
  • Morwenna Silver
  • Paul Thomas
  • Peter Van der Heyden
  • Charles Veale
  • Richard Warrington
  • Tony Williams
  • Andrew Williams
  • David Wood
  • Spencer Wright

 

New RHS Postgraduate Members, elected February 2022

  • Rosalind Acland
  • Benjamin Anderson
  • Antonia Anstatt
  • Shera AviYonah
  • Laura Bailey
  • Barnabas Balint
  • Holly Bamford
  • David Bonner
  • Jacob Brandler
  • Clare Burgess
  • Thomas Burnham
  • Ksenia Butuzova
  • Zara Christmas
  • Clare Victoria Church
  • Minna  Colakis
  • Juliana Coulton
  • Maria Florencia Denti
  • Laurie Dighton
  • Thomas Dobson
  • Michael Donnay
  • Megan Doole
  • Taryn Duffy
  • Judith Dunkling
  • Elias Forneris
  • Travis D. Frain
  • Katharina Friege
  • Jacqueline Grainger
  • Shreya Gupta
  • Lucy Haigh
  • Felicity Hall
  • Leif Bjarne Hammer
  • Annabel Hancock
  • Thomas Harper
  • Jordan Harris
  • Hans Erik Havsteen
  • Tanya Heath
  • Simon Sai-hau Ho
  • Ffion Hughes
  • Jonathan Hutchinson
  • Eve Jeffery-Wilson
  • Zhixia Jin
  • Pierce Jones
  • Alexander Kelleher
  • Mohammed Kharshan
  • Kajetan Kubala
  • Nur Laiq
  • Simon Lam
  • Eve Lang
  • Josh Lappen
  • Maelle Le Roux
  • Helen Leighton-Rose
  • Joel Littler
  • Zongyue Liu
  • Yicen Liu
  • Nicholas Logan
  • Vittorio Maresca di Serracapriola
  • Chloë Mayoux
  • Catriona McAvoy
  • John Merrington
  • Mohamed Mohamady
  • Conor Murphy
  • Olga Nikonenko
  • Kevin Noles
  • Kirsty Peacock
  • Kathrina Perry
  • Daniel Phillips
  • Megan Price
  • Jan-Willem Prügel
  • Will Ranger
  • Serena Rattu
  • Elizabeth Rees
  • Nate Richardson-Read
  • Laura Roberts
  • Matthew Selheimer
  • George Simmonds
  • James Squires
  • Swathi Srinivasan
  • Michelle Staff
  • Warren Stanislaus
  • Pavel Stepanov
  • Iria Suarez Martinez
  • Thomas Swailes
  • Chun Hin Lucas Tse
  • Noé Vagner-Clévenot
  • Amber Vella
  • Ziyi Wang
  • Amanda Westcott
  • Caitlin Williams
  • Gillian Woodcock
  • Anna Wright
  • Yihuan Xu
  • Zhao Zhiyuan
  • Anna Zhukova

 

Re-cataloguing and rediscovering the RHS Prothero Papers

In January 2022 the Society publishes a new catalogue of its papers of George W. Prothero (1848-1922), historian, literary editor and President of the RHS between 1901 and 1905. The Prothero collection runs to more than 1000 items and is the largest named collection in the RHS archive.

To accompany the launch, a new blog post features highlights and selected images from the collection.

About the Prothero catalogue

The new 252-page catalogue, which is available on the Archive pages of the Society’s website, provides item-level listings of Prothero’s correspondence, professional papers and manuscripts, dating from the late 1860s to the early 1920s.

In addition to the writing of a new catalogue, the Prothero project has included a conservation review of the collection, new storage, and the rediscovery and incorporation of 10 bundles of letters previously thought lost.

The Society is very grateful to the Marc Fitch Fund for co-funding this project, and to those who catalogued the collection: Dr Eilish Gregory, Imogen Evans and Zoë Karens, who also wrote the catalogue.

The collection runs to 20 storage boxes, and is accompanied online by a new ISAD(G) compliant catalogue to replace an earlier paper version written in the late 1960s. The new catalogue also directs researchers to other holdings of Prothero papers elsewhere in the UK.

About the Prothero collection

The principal series in the Society’s collection comprise personal and professional correspondence sent to Prothero. These cover his time as editor of the Quarterly Review and President of the Royal Historical Society, and include letters from the publisher John Murray, historian Oscar Browning, and Conservative politician and prime minister, Arthur Balfour.

These letters demonstrate Prothero’s commitment to promoting History as a serious, professional discipline of wide-ranging civic value. Between 1914 and 1922, exchanges with European and North American correspondents also reveal Prothero’s interest in British foreign policy and his contribution to the Versailles Peace Conference and post-war settlement.

Highlights from the collection include:

  • letters from the 1860s and 1870s detailing Prothero’s undergraduate career at Cambridge and his bid to become one of the University’s first lecturers in History;
  • a book of testimonials from leading historians in support of Prothero’s application to become Professor of History at Edinburgh University in 1894;
  • personal and professional letters on the course of the First World War and the Versailles Peace Conference, including correspondence from friends on the death of family members in conflict;
  • information on Prothero’s engagement in organisations such as the Village Children’s Historical Play Society, of which he was a council member; and his involvement with The New East journal, to promote understanding of Japan and Japanese culture.

About the RHS Archive

Following completion of the Prothero catalogue, the Society is currently reviewing other parts of its archive, including papers relating to the Camden Society (1838-97), the Royal Historical Society (from 1868), and the publications and literary estate of the Tudor historian, Sir Geoffrey Elton (1922-94).

Our aim is to publish new online catalogues and selected scans for each of these, and other, collections in the archive during 2022.

More broadly, we hope this availability — starting with the new G.W. Prothero Catalogue — will bring the RHS archive to wider public attention, as an important statement on the development and membership of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century historical profession in Britain and overseas.

For more information on this, please see the Library & Archive pages of the RHS website.

 

RHS President Emma Griffin on ‘Confronting History’s Cuts and Closures in 2021’

On the Society’s blog today, RHS President Professor Emma Griffin considers the cuts and closures that have affected UK History departments over the past 12 months.

Presently there’s close attention on Goldsmiths, University of London, where proposed cuts to History  threaten 7 full-time posts in a department of 14 historians. Goldsmiths follows similar cases earlier this year: at Aston University, where the History programme was saved from closure (though regrettably this was not the outcome for other departments), and at Kingston University where the History departments was closed and talented, full-time members of academic staff made redundant. Meanwhile, at London South Bank University (LSBU) the History Degree ended this April, as did Sunderland’s after the shutting of its faculty in 2020. Recent months have also seen threats to History provision and staffing at Chester, Hull and Leicester.

In this extended post, Emma Griffin outlines the Society’s response to proposed cuts or closures, and sets out the RHS’s current defence of History and historians at Goldsmiths. The post also asks that historians submit to the Society information on recent cuts, redundancies and closures, to enable the RHS to better understand the patterns of departmental change since the mid 2010s.

The challenges facing many History departments owe much to a removal of the cap on student intake, per institution. The result is considerable instability, disruption and vulnerability: declining figures at some universities, greatly enhanced numbers at others, and cycles of uncertainty for many more. This is an environment, Professor Griffin argues, that far exceeds the capacities of a single organisation or discipline, requiring closer collaboration by national organisations and learned societies in the humanities.

Read ‘Goldsmiths, Aston, Kingston, LSBU …. Confronting History’s Cuts and Closures in 2021′ on the RHS blog, Historical Transactions (2 November 2021).

 

RHS asks Government to clarify its position on historical research

The Royal Historical Society, together with the heads of other leading UK historical organisations, has written asking the Culture Secretary, Oliver Dowden MP, to clarify the government’s position on the funding of historical research.

An excerpt of the letter has today been published in The Sunday Times (Letters, p.26). The letter comes with the news that Dame Helen Ghosh, master of Balliol College, Oxford, has apologised for the historical acceptance of donations linked to the Atlantic slave trade.

The full text of the letter, together with its signatories:

 

“Dear Sir,

We write to express our concern as historians about ministers’ illegitimate interference in the research and interpretation done by our arm’s length heritage bodies such as museums, galleries, the Arts Council and the lottery heritage fund.

In particular we deplore the position, attributed to the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Department in the press recently, that Professor Corinne Fowler’s ‘Colonial Countryside’ project, which explores the links between National Trust properties, empire and slavery, will be barred from funding in future.  As historians, we find this deeply concerning and we ask the culture secretary, Oliver Dowden, to confirm or deny whether this is his department’s position.

Academics are protected from such interference by the ‘Haldane Principle’, which accepts that government should set the general strategic direction of public funding for academic research but that ministers must not seek to make directions on individual funding decisions, which are best left to peer review to ensure both quality and independence.  Arm’s length bodies such as the Arts Council and the National Lottery Heritage fund are not so explicitly protected.  Perhaps they should be; Parliament ought to consider this carefully.  But the Lottery Act at least specifies what are ministers’ powers and these do not include determination on individual projects.  The granting bodies, not the minister, have the expertise to determine what projects best fulfil their statutory mission, and both heritage organisations and individual researchers have the legitimate expectation based on long practice that the minister not interfere in those determinations.

The culture secretary has also been quoted as seeking to deny funding to any projects deemed ‘political’.  Not only do we dispute his authority to interfere in funding decisions, we also query his use of the word ‘political’.  It is worth pointing out that the Charity Commission has recently found that the National Trust’s recent investigations into the links between its properties, empire and slavery is compatible with its charitable purposes, i.e. not ‘political’ in the relevant sense of the word. The minister should welcome this finding and make clear that research of this kind, into the connections between heritage, slavery and empire, does indeed fall within the funding bodies’ public purposes, if deemed otherwise fundable by those bodies.

Britain has a tradition of arm’s length funding of education, culture and heritage which has always sought to insulate these spheres, crucial to free debate in a diverse society, from excessive interference by government.  Such interference stifles the capacity of historians to do their work and exerts a wider chilling effect.  It may deter – it may be intended to deter – historians from embarking on difficult or sensitive research.  It certainly undermines and impoverishes our ability to explore difficult issues.  It also runs counter to recent statements by the government in defence of academic freedom.

If anyone is being too ‘political’ here, it is politicians who violate the principles of arm’s-length governance by seeking to dictate what research our heritage bodies can and cannot support.”

Emma Griffin, President, Royal Historical Society
Peter Mandler, President, Historical Association
Peter D’Sena, Vice President, Royal Historical Society
Jonathan Morris, Vice President, Royal Historical Society
Olivette Otele, Vice President, Royal Historical Society
Jane Winters, Vice President, Royal Historical Society
Catherine Schenk, President, Economic History Society
Yolana Pringle, History UK
Jamie Wood, History UK.
Matthew Hilton, Co-Editor, Past & Present
Joanna Innes, Chair, Past & Present
Alexandra Walsham, Co-Editor, Past & Present
Naomi Tadmor, Chair, Social History Society

 

ECH Publishing: Research Excellence Framework (the REF)

 

 

If you are a UK scholar, or seeking employment in the UK, you will need to pay some minimal attention to the REF (the Research Excellence Framework, the current name for the periodic assessment of academic research undertaken by the UK funding bodies). The rules of the REF change from cycle to cycle, but the bottom line is: if you are publishing high-quality research with reasonable regularity, then you are doing all you need to be doing, so far as the publication portion of the REF is concerned. All publishing formats are eligible for submission to the REF.

It does not matter whether your research appears in a journal (still less a ‘highly-rated’ journal) or in a collection of essays or in a monograph or online. When your research is assessed by the REF panel, it will be read in full by an assessor, who will make a judgement based on what is read, not where it appeared. (You will be told otherwise – perhaps by managers, or scholars in other fields, where practices differ – but the truth is that all history publications submitted to the REF are read by assessors and judged on that basis alone).

Therefore, all that matters is the quality of what you produce. We are not always the best judges of the quality of our own work. So peer-review is a helpful guide to the REF outcome (which is simply peer-review itself). That is why submitting to a ‘highly-rated’ journal is a good idea – because your work will get searching peer review and acceptance in a competition is itself an indicator of quality. But a first-rate chapter in a book will still get equal treatment by the REF panel.

As we say above in the section on book chapters, peer review tends not to be so rigorous for collections of essays. In addition, editors of collections often try to pack too many items into a single book – to please more colleagues! – and so you may be confined to 6-8,000 words whereas a journal article may run to 8-10,000 words; and you are likely to be able to say more, to demonstrate more rigour, significance and originality in a journal article, than in a short book chapter. This is also the reason why books tend to do better in the REF – not because they are favoured on principle, but because historians tend to put their best work into their books, at the length needed to demonstrate the depth of the research and the validity of the argument.

 

ECH Publishing: Other Formats

 

 

A very large majority of the work published by historians appears in one of these three formats – journal articles, chapters in books, books. These formats allow for the evidence intensive and subject-extensive treatment that history favours. But there are lots of other ways to publish, especially online, and these alternative formats tend to cater to other needs than the simple presentation of research. Some early-career scholars find that their first published words take the form of book reviews.

Journals receive lots of miscellaneous books for review and are often delighted to find someone – anyone – who knows enough about the subject to review them. There is a case to be made for only reviewing books after you’ve written one yourself – an experience that imposes a proper degree of modesty. (It also shows that, minimally, you know what you’re talking about.) If you don’t have a track record, be extra careful not to raise unrealistic expectations or to be too territorial.

Normally you should be given the chance to proofread the book review. And of course you get ‘payment’ in the form of the book. Forums and roundtables are increasingly popular formats in journals and on blogs. They are excellent formats for stimulating discussion (of controversial issues or influential books) and for broadening the range of voices. They’re normally by invitation only.

But you can be the host, if you can find a journal editor willing to entrust you with the task of putting together a forum. Often roundtables in print originate as live roundtables at conferences. They are chattier, usually shorter than full-size journal articles (say 3-4 contributions of 1-4,000 words each?), and don’t require the full scholarly apparatus, as they tend to be more argumentative and less loaded with evidence.

 

Online formats

Some traditional publications (like book reviews) now often appear in online-only formats. There is no reason why you cannot include them in your C.V., just as you might print book reviews. But be conservative. If there is really no difference between the online version and its print equivalent – if you were commissioned by a reputable book review site, and you submitted a full-length review with a stable URL – then surely it’s the functional equivalent of the print version.

But if it’s just a blog post, or some other more casual form of contribution, without apparatus, un-peer reviewed, it really has no place on your list of publications; it will just look like padding. Your CV is an accounting of your scholarly qualifications, not an advertisement.

 

 

ECH Publishing: After Publication

 

Unlike with journal articles, you are almost guaranteed to get some feedback, at least within the first year, in the form of book reviews. Your publisher will ask you for a list of journals that are relevant to your book – you’re entitled to give them a reasonably long list, though make sure that they really are relevant and do publish book reviews. Include online book review sites.

You’re entitled to check up to ensure that the publishers have sent copies of your book to at least a healthy selection of the journals that you have specified. Most book reviews are pretty anodyne. They’ll tell the reader what the book is about and give it a general recommendation. Sometimes they’ll be more, or less, enthusiastic. You may well feel that some reviewers have been unfair, perhaps protecting their turf or their own interpretation. That’s the luck of the draw. You have to hope that across the spread of reviews you get justice.

It is almost never a good idea to write to a negative reviewer (or to the journal) to claim a right-to-reply. There is no such thing, unless you can prove malice, in which case you ought to be in court. The economics of book publishing are not changing as fast as they might. Most academic monographs are now selling under 400 copies each. They will sit in a limited number of libraries, where they will not be read by many (if any) people. This is partly because a lot of monographs are being produced more for hiring and promotion purposes than out of intellectual necessity, and partly because monographs are the part of the publishing landscape least accessible to online users.

It may be that the spread of e-books and the development of open-access options for monographs (still only in their infancy) may address this latter deficiency. Regardless, you can take heart from the knowledge that, as with journal articles, their shelf-life is very long indeed. If anything you write is still read at all 100 years from now, it’s likely to be a book.

 

 

ECH – Publishing a Book (II)

 

If an editor has agreed to review a proposal on its own, you may get a response in a month or so, as a short proposal does not receive a lot of scrutiny from reviewers. If you have submitted a complete manuscript, six months is not unusual. It takes a long time for a peer-reviewer to find the space to give a full book manuscript the attention it deserves. If you have waited that long, however, you ought to get some decent feedback – several pages from each of 1-3 referees.

Unlike journal submissions, a book manuscript won’t typically be reviewed double-blind; you won’t know the reviewers’ identities, but they will, inevitably, know yours. Like a journal submission, the editor will then either decline your manuscript, accept it outright (while encouraging you to address the referees’ comments in developing your final version), or give you the equivalent of ‘revise and resubmit’ – encourage you to go away and re- think the manuscript in light of the referees’ comments. This latter verdict is not as common as in journal submissions – it is asking a lot to get an author to rewrite a whole book.

As with a journal submission, once accepted your manuscript will go through copy-editing and proofreading. A good publisher will proofread your book themselves and expect you to do it too. As with journal submissions, you have to confine your major changes to the copy-editing stage. And there’s an additional stage as well – indexing. Most first authors do their own index, at the same time as they are proofreading. There are good software packages that make this easy. Some journal articles have illustrations, and it’s the author’s job to source (and pay for permissions for) illustrations. All the publisher does is provide the technical specifications (nowadays, what kind of image file is required). This task is more onerous for books, which often have a lot of illustrations.

Only the wealthier publishers will even offer to help with sourcing and paying for illustrations. There are charitable trusts that you can apply to for subsidy – ask your publisher for advice. Most books will require at least a cover illustration – again, probably your responsibility. You’ll also be asked to supply jacket copy – including the ‘blurb’ describing and touting the book – although normally publishers themselves secure endorsement blurbs from senior scholars (often by asking those who refereed your manuscript or even excerpting the report).