ACLS Launches 2025 ACLS Open Access Book Prize and Arcadia Open Access Publishing Award Competition

ACLS is pleased to announce it is now accepting nominations for the 2025 ACLS Open Access Book Prize for authors and Arcadia Open Access Publishing Award for publishers.

For more than a century, ACLS has been a leader in supporting the creation and circulation of humanistic knowledge—knowledge that advances understanding of humanity and human endeavors. Today, in promoting the sharing of such knowledge via open access—publications made freely available in digital formats online—ACLS reaffirms its commitment to equity and innovation in how humanistic knowledge is shared, both within and beyond the academy.

Established in 2023, the ACLS Open Access Book Prize and Arcadia Open Access Publishing Award aim to raise awareness about the benefits of open access publishing in the humanities, as well as support increased access to high-quality humanistic research and writing via open access, which is increasingly vital for today’s diverse communities of students, educators, and librarians around the world. Both awards are made possible by a generous grant from Arcadia.

Now in its second year, this program will once again recognize authors and publishers of exceptional, innovative, and open humanities scholarship. It also offers the largest prizes recognizing open access monographs in the humanities with dual awards for each winning book: $20,000 for authors, and $30,000 for publishers to support making future books available as open access.

The 2025 competition will recognize one open access monograph published between 2018 and 2023 in each of the following categories:

• Environmental Humanities, including humanistic  examinations of  such issues as climate change, biodiversity, conservation, and environmental justice;
• History, including historical examinations of all eras, geographical regions, peoples, and/or cultural developments through any theoretical lens;
• Literary Studies, including studies of language, literature, and media from all eras, cultures, and locales through any theoretical lens; and
• Multimodal, in any humanistic discipline, including works that incorporate digital content or affordances that are not possible in a print edition, demonstrate effective and innovative use of online environments and contain the entirety of the monograph’s text (i.e., not a companion website to a separate print edition).

Publishers are invited to nominate up to three books in each of the four categories through Tuesday, September 10, 2024. Learn more about the prize at acls.org/OAbookprizes.

ACLS will also host a series of live information sessions via Zoom on Wednesday, July 31, Wednesday, August 14, and Wednesday, August 28, 2024. These sessions are free to join.