Publishers' reputations

How does one judge the reputation of a publisher? What criteria are used? Where does one go to find out? Thanks.

Intellectual rigor, or the contribution to knowledge from within a scholarly framework. That's what I am after. Non-fiction. So I guess that sales isn't uppermost (these types of books rarely make much money). But there are obviously other criteria to consider, including the reputation of the publisher for (I guess) releasing high quality books. But how do I find this out?

I looked through that website, but all it contains is a list of university publishers. There is no "ranking" on there of how comparatively "good" a publisher is, so it doesn't help. Amazon - I assume the best they will come up with are sales figures for books. Again, this doesn't tell us what kind of status a scholarly press has in the scholarly community. Going to a library - the same problem. The most you may find out is how good the publisher is at shifting books, not how reputable it is.

I understand what you are saying. But when, for example, I mention some scholarly presses (as you say, not all of these are university presses) I get a positive reaction. Something like "Oh, they're good." Others though I don't get this sort of immediate reaction about. I wonder how they are making these comparisons. I was also told that contracts offered by this type of publisher are pretty much the same. Basically, they offer similar royalties, for example. So what would you say I should look for in a book contract, that will differentiate them over each other? The number of books they publish? Their sales (but how would I get sales figures)? The quality of their printing (but how will I know)?