About Veruscript
Academic publishers have had it far too good for far too long. Their high subscription prices limit access to and reuse of research. Their open access journals charge too much per article. Open access must be affordable and available to all researchers— no matter their location or discipline. Publishing needs to be put back in the hands of the community, where it belongs. Only then will we break this vicious circle.
We are trying to make this happen. Our reviewer rewards are returning value to the community and our publishing services offer a real alternative for societies, universities and academics, letting them set up their own journals, effortlessly.
Join us in our mission to help the community take back control of publishing.
From our Founders: Nazik and Gleb
It was 2009 and we were in the library at the University of York. For some reason the importance of the journal articles we were reading struck us more than usual. This led us to think about the people behind the research — the authors and reviewers. The more we thought, the more annoyed we got. The researchers put in all the work, but it was the publisher and the publisher alone that profited. We decided there and then that we had to try to change things. We had to help the community take back control of publishing. The seed that became Veruscript was planted. At least one publisher needed to be on the side of the research community!
Fast forward a few years and that seed has grown. We are building a business with the sole objective of serving the community. We are passionate about helping researchers and, as a for-profit company, we can achieve this through product, business model, and technological experimentation. This way we can lead from the front, rather than following the pack.
Our small team is based in central London and consists of publishers, developers and marketers. Between us, we have nearly 50 years of publishing experience and members with backgrounds from some of the most prestigious academic publishers on the planet. Our company may be new, but we have a wealth of industry experience and knowledge.
We work hard to fulfil our mission and our own journals have a unique peer reviewer rewards scheme. Here, reviewers are given the option of £100 cash or £200 in publishing credits (which they can also pay forward) for each timely and constructive review they perform. Few other publishers do this, but they should, as the community directly benefits from the value generated by its researchers.
We are just at the start of our ambitions, and we are not standing still. In fact, we have recently launched our publishing services. With this we offer a professional, end-to-end publishing service to university and society partners at a fraction of the normal price. This has been made possible by creating dynamic, agile systems.
We look at publishing as a blank slate and are free of politics and shareholder expectations, with no legacy revenue to protect. In short, we can do things differently. Our in-house systems are built from the ground up. We test and learn and fail fast to ensure that we ultimately provide the tools that are right for the community.
Our company continues to evolve, experiment and grow. We promise to always work hand-in-hand with the community to make things fairer, better and more cost effective. If we don’t have what the community needs, we can build it. Our dedicated team is at your service and looks forward to working with you to make ideas a reality.
Our journey is just beginning. Why not join us on it? Whether you have an idea for a project or need help with your publishing programme, simply email hello@veruscript.com. Who know where it will take us!
Best wishes,
Nazik Ibraimova and Gleb Cheglakov
Co-Founders, Veruscript
Veruscript on Medium
We launched our Medium site in 2016 to get closer to our community. Here we post not only information about the company, but also things that we think will be useful to researchers, societies, librarians and anyone interested in academic publishing. To this end, we have recently launched our Publishing 101 series, which gives anyone interested in academic publishing the basics. However, we also post about publishing in general and about the research community — both from a general and subject-specific perspective.
Posts mainly from Tim Redding and Ruth Wells (previous posts by Lisa Walton).
We want to hear from you, so if you have any ideas for posts that you would find useful, please let us know at media@veruscript.com.
