Publish With IFB Gaming
IFB Gaming’s Research Library publishes open-access research, position papers, and applied case studies across three focus areas: gaming as engagement infrastructure, digital inclusion, and socio-technical systems. We publish work grounded in real community delivery, not just theory, the kind of research that’s been tested against the messy, resource-constrained reality of frontline digital inclusion work, not only the seminar room.
All volumes are published online and freely accessible to readers. We’re especially interested in work that bridges academic rigour with practitioner insight, research that a frontline delivery worker could actually use, not just cite.
What We Publish
We accept submissions in three areas, the domains we can genuinely review with authority:
- Gaming, research on gaming as a tool for engagement, learning, and social connection, not entertainment for its own sake.
- Digital Inclusion, research and applied case studies on access, digital skills, AI literacy, and community technology delivery.
- Socio-Technical Systems, work examining how social and technical subsystems interact, including joint optimisation, participatory design, and systems thinking approaches.
You don’t need to be affiliated with IFB Gaming to submit, we welcome proposals from researchers, practitioners, and partner organisations working in these areas.
Once accepted, your paper is filed in the Research Library against whichever of our seven digital inclusion pillars (Digital Citizenship, Commerce, Education, Governance, Healthcare, Living, and Safety & Security) it best fits, so it sits alongside our wider published research and stays genuinely discoverable, not siloed off in a separate section.
For Academics, Researchers & Practitioners
You’ve researched something real, digital exclusion, gaming and social connection, how socio-technical systems actually behave in the field. But the journal it’s headed for will mostly be read by other academics. The community the research is about may never see it at all.
That’s not a flaw in the research. It’s a mismatch between where the work lives and who it’s actually for. IFB Gaming exists to connect academia to community, and this Library is how we do it for published research specifically:
- Your research reaches the people it’s about, not just your peers. Accepted work is actively shared through our third sector, industry, and community networks, Good Things Foundation’s National Digital Inclusion Network, the Digital Poverty Alliance’s Charter for Digital Inclusion, and our own Data Waypoint hubs. If your research was grounded in a community, this is how it gets back to one.
- Demonstrable real-world reach for impact case studies. Distribution beyond academic citation is exactly the kind of evidence REF impact statements and funder reports increasingly ask for, and struggle to show.
- Faster, lower-friction review. No multi-year submission cycle. We review quickly and work with you directly through revisions.
- Fully open access. No paywall standing between your findings and the practitioners, families, or frontline workers who could actually use them.
If your department or research group is organising a symposium, workshop, or themed collection in gaming, digital inclusion, or socio-technical systems, we’re also open to hosting the full proceedings, see the collections option below.
Proposal and Publishing Workflow
You can propose a standalone paper, or a full collection (for example, proceedings from a workshop or symposium you’re organising). The volume doesn’t need to originate from IFB Gaming, we’re open to hosting external collections that fit our scope.
The process works as follows:
- Submit a proposal. Send us an outline, abstract, or full draft, along with a short note on scope and intended audience.
- We review it. Our editorial team, including academic advisors from our research partnerships, evaluates fit, rigour, and relevance. We may come back with questions or requested revisions.
- We confirm acceptance. If accepted, we’ll agree scope, format, and timeline with you directly.
- We support you through editing. You’ll have an editorial contact throughout, the same review discipline we apply to our own published research.
- We publish. Once finalised, your work goes live in the Research Library, openly accessible, properly credited, and citable.
There’s a flat publishing fee of £200 per paper, covering editorial review, formatting, hosting, and distribution. Publishing with us isn’t just going live on a webpage. Every accepted paper is actively shared through the networks we’re already part of:
- Third sector, through Good Things Foundation’s National Digital Inclusion Network (NDIN) and Community Southwark.
- Industry, through the Digital Poverty Alliance’s Charter for Digital Inclusion, which brings together signatories including Currys, Virgin Media O2, and the NHS.
- Community, through our own Data Waypoint network and local delivery hubs across Southwark, Lambeth, Croydon, and Bromley.
That’s the difference between a paper that’s technically published and one that actually reaches the people positioned to act on it. For larger collections (full proceedings or multi-paper volumes), pricing is agreed individually based on scope, get in touch and we’ll work it out together.
Get in Touch
For proposals or informal enquiries about publishing with IFB Gaming, contact us at research@ifbgaming.com with the subject line “Research Submission: [Your Title]”.
Browse what we’ve already published in the Research Library →