Nova Science Publishers is a privately held academic press founded in 1985 by Frank H. Columbus, a former senior editor at Plenum Publishing, and headquartered in Hauppauge, New York. After Columbus's death in 2010, his wife Nadya Columbus took over operations. Nova is first and foremost a book publisher: it releases over 800 titles a year - edited volumes, monographs, handbooks, and encyclopedias - across medicine and health, science and technology, and the social sciences and humanities. Its journal program is small by comparison: the publisher's own site currently lists 13 active journals, with more than 20 further titles marked discontinued.

Nova occupies an unusual position in academic publishing. Its books have been indexed in the Web of Science Book Citation Index and it ranked among the most prolific academic book publishers worldwide in the 2005-2012 period, yet it has also drawn recurring criticism from librarians and research-integrity commentators over editorial rigor, mass solicitation of chapter contributions, and the repackaging of freely available public-domain material. This guide explains what Nova publishes, how its open-access options work, what the criticism actually says, and how to do due diligence before you commit a manuscript.

• Books (the main business) - 800+ new titles per year under the Nova Science Publishers and Nova Medicine and Health imprints. Formats include edited collections (often built from open calls and email solicitations), single-author monographs, handbooks, and reference works. Some Nova books have been included in the Web of Science Book Citation Index, though citation-impact studies found Nova's books had the lowest citation impact among the five most prolific book publishers.
• Journals - 13 active titles spanning child and adolescent health, public health, disability studies, alternative medicine, energy and environment, mathematics, ethics, and the politics and economics of Europe, Russia, and Eurasia. Several health-sciences titles were long edited by Prof. Joav Merrick. More than 20 former Nova journals - including Journal of Pain Management, Journal of Stem Cells, and White House Studies - are discontinued but remain citable in the archive.

Nova's open-access program is book-chapter oriented and less standardized than at larger publishers. Published options:

Nova does not publish a public APC price list, a Creative Commons licensing matrix, or an LMIC waiver policy, and it has no transformative (Read & Publish) agreements on record. If open-access compliance with a funder mandate matters to you, get licensing and fee terms in writing from Nova before signing anything - and check that the license offered actually satisfies your funder.

Nova states that it operates a formalized peer-review process, with guidelines in the Authors' Central section of its website. In practice, rigor varies substantially by venue: journal articles and some book series are refereed, while librarians and academic commentators have documented cases of edited-volume chapters and republished government reports reaching print without meaningful independent review. There is no published data on review model (single- vs double-anonymized) or average turnaround. Ask the handling editor directly how many reviewers will assess your submission and on what timeline.

1. Books: submit a proposal through the Submit a Book Proposal form on novapublishers.com, including scope, table of contents, and author/editor CVs.
2. Chapters: most chapters are invited; open calls run through the Submit an Abstract Online form. Confirm the volume editor's credentials and the review plan before committing.
3. Journal articles: submissions go through Nova's own proprietary system via each journal's page - there is no Editorial Manager or ScholarOne portal.
4. Formatting: requirements vary by title; SciSpace hosts Nova formats to speed up manuscript preparation.
5. Contract stage: read the copyright and archiving terms carefully; Nova's default terms are its own rather than standard CC licenses.

Nova is a real, long-established publisher - it is not a fly-by-night operation - but it appeared on Beall's list (characterized as a vanity press) and continues to attract criticism for aggressive email solicitation, uneven peer review, and reselling public-domain content at high prices. It is not listed as a member of COPE, OASPA, or STM. Practical checklist before submitting: (1) confirm the specific journal's current indexing in Scopus, Web of Science, or PubMed - do not rely on publisher-level claims; (2) ask your institution whether Nova books count toward evaluation and tenure requirements; (3) treat unsolicited chapter invitations with the same caution as any bulk email; (4) get all fees and license terms in writing first.