General Information and Governance of the Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme (ASPP)

The ASPP supports the publication of scholarly books in the humanities and social sciences. The ASPP was established because scholarly books, although essential to the advancement of research in and about Canada, are not financially self-supporting, having limited specialist audiences and therefore short, unremunerative print-runs. The ASPP facilitates the dissemination of Canadian research in the humanities and social sciences. Book-length manuscripts in the various disciplines in the humanities and social sciences are evaluated for support through the process of peer review if they meet the ASPP’s eligibility criteria.

The Management Board (MB), composed of the table officers of the ASP Committee and the Vice-President, Research Dissemination, is responsible for the ASPP’s policies, including its regulations and the approval of disbursement of grants to publishers. While administered by the HSSFC, the peer-review activities of the ASPP fall under the purview of the Aid to Scholarly Publications (ASP) Committee. The ASP Committee oversees the evaluation process of manuscripts submitted to the ASPP by:

1. Ruling on the manuscript’s eligibility;
2. Suggesting potential assessors and;
3. When readers’ reports and the author’s reply have been collected, deciding on the acceptability of the manuscript for a grant.