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Student Journals: Offprint Orders

Offprints Explained

Offprints (also referred to as reprints) are bound publications of individual articles included in a journal issue.

As a courtesy to the authors, print journals typically provide authors with a standard number of free offprints and/or copies of the full issue in which the article has been published, allowing authors to order additional offprints or copies at their own cost.

Due to financial considerations, journals offer different number of free offprints, or sometimes none at all.  As such, offprint order forms are journal-specific, and can be found on the Forms Library > Publishing and Production tab.

Journals might have multiple offprint offers for certain issues or authors (student issue, book review authors).  Thus a journal may have multiple versions of an offprint form.   As Author Copyright Agreements specify the offprint offer as one of the contractual points, it is important that the Offprint Form sent to an author aligns with the offer of the Agreement already signed by the author.

Whereas for author copyright agreements, each author must have a separate agreement in place, Offprint Order Forms should be sent only to the first-listed author, who will place a single order on behalf of the article’s co-authors.

As offprint order information is included in the print order, all offprint orders must be submitted to the Journal Administrator  in advance of your submitting files to the printer. 

NEW!   Authors appearing in online-only Journals have the option of ordering offprints at their own expense.

Author Offprint Orders

Authors in both print and online-only journals have the option of ordering offprints of their articles.

In addition to any complimentary offprints / issue copies which might be offerered by your print journal, authors  have the option to order additional offprints or copies of the issue at their own cost.   Authors in online-only journals can place their order directly with our printer, JCI using the instructions on the Online Only Author Offprint Form.

The cost for offprints is calculated based upon the quantity ordered as well as the page count of the article.

Once you have completed editing an article and applied the formatting macro, you will have the approximate page count of the article, and you are now ready to email that information, along with the Offprint Order Form to the first-listed author of an article.

An author may order up to 250 total offprints (inclusive of any free ones) using the pricing formula listed on the offprint form.  If an author requests more, email the Journal Administrator the author, name, article title, page count, and quantity or offprints requested, and a request for a price quote will be sent to the printer. 

For print journals, authors must return the offprint form even if they do not want to order additional offprints, as it has address and contact information required for shipping the complimentary order or copies of the issue.

Offprints are printed and shipped UPS ground, and typically arrive 1-2 weeks after the issue has been completed.

Authors ordering additional offprints will be invoiced after we receive the final invoice from the printer, and we know the exact costs including shipping.

Author Offprint Order Forms

All journal-specific Offprint Order Forms can be found on the Forms Library tab, but a generic sample can be found below.  Please note that depending upon the journal you may have various offprint offers for student pieces or book reviews.

Generic samples of Offprint Forms are below.

Adjusting your Journal's offprint offer

The number of gratis offprints/ copies of the complete issue provided to authors in our print journals varies by Journal, and occasionally by issue or author (for student pieces, book reviews, or occasionally special symposium issues).

The expense of offering offprints is high, and due to financial issues some journals are adjusting their complimentary offprints offers.  As the main expense of offprints is the set-up fee, so reducing the number of free offprints from 25 to 15 will not be a very large cost savings.

Some journals are opting to do away with free offprints altogether, and offsetting this by offering more than the typical 2 copies of the issue.  Authors will still have the option of ordering offprints, but entirely at their own expense.

If you are considering changing your Journal's offprint offer, you will need to discuss with the Journal Administrator well ahead of time, as Author Agreements will need to be adjusted to reflect any change of offprint offers, and as they are sent to authors well in advance of the offprint forms, you’ll need to plan ahead.

It is possible to transition mid-way through production on an issue:  early selected authors receive the original offer included in the Agreement they signed, and authors selected after this change sign an Agreement reflecting the new offer.