Design Standards

Sometimes authors have funds to get their peer-reviewed publication designed and laid out by a freelance graphic artist or grad student before submitting it to Publishing ready for printing. This can be a great help for production, but it can also be a problem—often these publications are not ready for printing after all. It can take a UC ANR designer nearly as much time to clean up one of these author-designed publications as it takes to produce it from scratch. It also can cost more money; many design elements chosen by authors incur additional printing costs.

Due to these issues, Publishing stipulates that authors—or their designers—follow general designer standards that have been established by our designers. Authors should download the Design Standards, which are also available on the website, and provide them to their designer before work begins on design and layout.

If authors choose not to follow these Design Standards:

a) Authors will be recharged the hours that our graphic designer spends correcting the layout so it can be printed

OR

b) Authors strip out all formatting and submit the manuscript in Word for design and layout.

If authors choose to do neither a) or b), we will return the publication to the author and not be involved in its further production.