About us
Quæ was created in 2006 by three French research institutes: Cirad, Ifremer and INRAE. With a catalogue of over 1,600 titles, Quæ aims to promote exchanges between scientists, the transmission of knowledge and know-how, and to support decision-making and public debate.
Covering topics as varied as agriculture and forestry, environment, nutrition, sea, aquatic and aquacultural resources, Life and Earth sciences or Human and Social Sciences, Quæ has become a leading French publisher in the scientific and technical sector.
Quæ has been a digital publisher since 2008, with an XML-structured publishing chain for digital publications (PDF and ePub). In order to meet the French and European guidelines regarding the free distribution of research documents which are funded by the French public research or by European Union funds, Quæ publish a great part of its new releases in open access on a dedicated website : quae-open.com.
The Quae.com bookshop offers a broad and diverse catalogue, featuring titles published by Quæ as well as by other publishers. Although these works are carefully selected, Quæ cannot guarantee the peer-review process or the editorial quality of titles published by other publishers.
Who are Éditions Quae’s publications intended for?
Scientists, teachers and students, professionals but also those interested in science are targeted by our publications.
Key figures
- 4 sites (Antony, Brest, Montpellier and Versailles)
- 50 publications a year
- More than 2,800 authors
- 19 collections
- 50 attendances on stands and in fairs a year
- 65 books translated abroad
- Nearly 150 titles in English
- Nearly 1,500 digital books available
- More than 1,600 books in the catalog
Membership
Quæ is a member of the association of European University Presses, the OAPEN and the Directory of Open Access Books.
Affiliated with one or more public scientific institutions or institutions recognized as being of public interest, Alef publishers are tasked with producing and making available to society as a whole, in France and abroad, journals and books covering all scientific disciplines, in both print and digital formats.
Alef publishers define their own editorial policies: they select editorial content, coordinate peer review, and support authors in the writing or formatting of manuscripts. They are responsible for the entire publishing chain and organize the various stages of production, dissemination, distribution, marketing, and promotion, adding editorial value at each step of this process.
Serving research regardless of its national or international origin, Alef publishers guarantee the independence of their editorial policies—including from their supervisory authorities—the collegial nature of their decision-making, and the editorial quality of their publications.
As participants in the construction of knowledge, and convinced that scientific culture is a prerequisite for the emancipation of citizens, Alef publishing houses subscribe to the necessity of opening up science to a broad audience. For this reason, their full mission is to ensure continuity between highly specialized works and publications intended for a wider readership. As non-profit structures with a public service mission, they aim to produce and disseminate a diversity of scientific outputs that these publishers alone are able to initiate within the ecosystem of scholarly publishing.
Committed to transparency in procedures and funding, to the values of integrity and honesty in research, and to shedding light on reality through discourse grounded in the scientific method—its evidence, sources, and data—the publishers who are members of Alef are dedicated to an open and shared science that fully contributes to critical thinking and public debate.