ANU Press is Australia's first open-access university press. Established in 2004 as ANU E Press by the Australian National University (and renamed ANU Press in 2014), it was built on a simple premise: peer-reviewed scholarship should be free to read and free to publish. Every one of its 900+ books and roughly 10 journals is available online at no cost, in PDF, EPUB and HTML formats, with print-on-demand copies sold for readers who want a physical edition.

That makes ANU Press a diamond open-access publisher: there are no article processing charges (APCs), no book processing charges, and no subscription paywalls. Publishing costs are covered by the university. For authors in the humanities and social sciences - especially anyone working on Australia, the Pacific, or Asia - it is one of the most accessible reputable publishing routes available. This guide covers the journal portfolio, how the fee-free model works, peer review, and how to submit.

ANU Press journals are concentrated in history, policy, and human-environment research, with a strong Asia-Pacific and Australian orientation. The table below maps common paper types to the best-established venues.

• ~10 peer-reviewed journals, all fully open access, spanning Indigenous history, human ecology, policy analysis, feminist history, environmental history, Asia-Pacific affairs, and undergraduate research.
• 900+ scholarly books - monographs, edited collections, biographies and textbooks - averaging 50-60 new peer-reviewed publications a year. Flagship book series cover Asia-Pacific studies, Australian politics, and Indigenous studies.
• Submissions are evaluated through subject-specific editorial boards covering the press's disciplinary range.

Note that some journals historically associated with ANU scholars - such as the Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology (Taylor & Francis) and the Journal of World-Systems Research (University of Pittsburgh Library System) - are published elsewhere; check the journal's own site for its actual publisher before submitting.

ANU Press runs one of the cleanest open-access models in scholarly publishing:

Because there are no fees, waiver programs and Read & Publish agreements are simply not needed. The trade-off is selectivity and scope: ANU Press publishes in its areas of strength, and the default CC BY-NC-ND licence is more restrictive than the CC BY licence some funders mandate - authors with a strict CC BY requirement should raise it with the press early.

• Model: double-anonymized peer review is the norm for books and most journals.
• Governance: submissions pass through subject-specific editorial boards, with revision after reviewers' reports and final board approval before acceptance.
• Turnaround: most journals publish annually or semi-annually, so decision and publication timelines follow each journal's cycle - check the individual journal page for dates.

1. Pick the venue. Browse the journals list at press.anu.edu.au to match your paper's scope, or identify the relevant book series and editorial board for a monograph proposal.
2. Read the author guidelines. Each journal sets its own style; Chicago and APA styles are the most common across the portfolio.
3. Prepare the manuscript. Format to the journal's specifications - SciSpace formatting templates can speed this up.
4. Submit as directed. Journals accept submissions through their own editorial contacts and portals listed on the ANU Press site; book proposals go to the press's editorial team.
5. Respond to review. Expect double-anonymized review and at least one revision round before board approval.

ANU Press is a member of COPE (the Committee on Publication Ethics) and follows its guidelines on authorship, plagiarism, corrections and retractions. As a university-owned, non-profit press with no author fees, it has none of the pay-to-publish incentives associated with predatory publishing; its reputation as a globally recognised leader in open-access scholarly publishing rests on board-governed peer review and two decades of freely available output.