Edinburgh University Press is creating a £250,000 fund to publish Open Access editions of 50 research publications by University of Edinburgh staff. These books, published by EUP over the next five years in both print and digital formats, will be freely available in their ebook edition to a global audience on publication.

The funding comes from EUP’s cash reserves and speaks to their mission as a University Press to maximise the influence and impact of research in the humanities and social sciences.

This major initiative is part of a commitment to finding a sustainable model for OA monograph publishing in the humanities. To this end, EUP will invest the sales revenue from the print editions of these OA books in the fund, to cover the costs for additional future OA publications.

Nicola Ramsey, Chief Executive of EUP, said ‘I am delighted to be launching this initiative. Open Access is a key theme of EUP’s strategic plan and we hope this fund will go some way to help solve the challenge of funding OA monographs for academics in the Humanities, and to finding a sustainable OA model for our books.’

Sarah Prescott, Head of the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Edinburgh, said ‘I very much welcome this exciting and forward-looking commitment from Nicola Ramsey and EUP to support Open Access publication for Humanities research at the University of Edinburgh. This major initiative provides vital support for the work of Humanities scholars to increase its impact and visibility as well as widening accessibility to world-leading research.’

Find out more about the first eight books to be published under this initiative:

Available now

• Medical Caregiving Narratives of the First World War by Marie Allitt
• Writing the Past in Twenty-First-Century American Fiction by Alexandra Lawrie
• Scottish Education and Society since 1945 by Lindsay Paterson

Available 30 June 2023

• Junian Latinity in the Roman Empire, Volume 1 edited by Pedro López Barja, Carla Masi Doria and Ulrike Roth
• Theocritus and Things by Lilah Grace Canevaro
• Iconoclasm in European Cinema by Chiara Quaranta

Available 31 July 2023

• Neo-Traditionalism in Islam in the West by Walaa Quisay
• The Lost History of Sextus Aurelius Victor by Justin Stover and George Woudhuysen

Find out more about Open Access at Edinburgh University Press: https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/open-access-publishing