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Opening up academic books helps the important scholarship we publish in the arts, humanities, and social sciences to find its broadest possible readership. It enables anyone around the world with an internet connection to read, respond to, and build upon a work and helps raise the profile of authors and their research. It means students, independent scholars, researchers in low-income countries, and anyone with a passion for their subject can access a work without needing to pay.

It’s challenging, though, to flip established models and ways of working. Current models mean open access is only an option for a small number of authors. In order to change the academic publishing landscape, and make open access a reality for more scholars in the arts, humanities, and social sciences, we need collaboration and support from all those involved scholarly communications. That’s why we’re delighted that both UKRI and cOAlition have recently expressed strong support for OA books.

UKRI’s new policy will require OA for books and chapters that acknowledge UKRI funding and are published from 1 January 2024, and UKRI has indicated it will provide ring-fenced funding to enable this. Similarly, cOAlition S has recommended that funders require immediate OA for books and that they provide financial support. These announcements build on the important work done by other funders in this area. OA for books has been slow to develop, but we are now reaching a critical point where we have the opportunity to make OA possible for many more authors.

Of course, publishers, too, will need to be active and flexible collaborators if we are to succeed in making immediate OA the predominant mode of publication for scholarly books. Bloomsbury has a history of creative approaches to OA, from our original experiments with freemium, to case-by-case flexibility for individual projects, and a generous green OA policy for chapters. We are now entering a new landscape. What we do know, is that it’s important to us as a company that OA book publication is, in future, an option for all our authors, not just those associated with wealthy institutions and funders, and this will inform our thinking and future approaches. We remain committed to exploring innovative ways of expanding open access for books, and are keen to hear from those who want to work with us.