Image – Getty: Susan Vineyard
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
On ‘the Higher-Education Landscape’
As our regular readers know, this is University Press Week, a promotional program of the Association of University Presses, the intent of which, as the association puts it, is “to celebrate and raise awareness of the work that university presses do every day.”
Today (November 13), midway through the 13th annual iteration of the “AUPresses'” program, we have news from Oxford University Press (OUP) that it’s setting up a new, annual prize for early-career researchers in the humanities and social sciences who are looking to publish their first books.
The inaugural prize will open for submissions in January, awarding up to 10 applicants with an opportunity to publish their original and innovative works fully open-access.
While the arrival of a new publishing-related awards program seems at times to be an hourly event in the United Kingdom—easily the most awards-saturated international market we cover—this one, unlike most we cover, is in the academic sector, of course, rather than in the trade.
The rationale for creating what’s being called Oxford’s “First Book Prize,” is that it may help answer the “steep challenges” that OUP’s media messaging says are dogging researchers, “such as navigating the current job market and securing funding for their projects.”
Books selected as winners will be published on the Oxford Academic platform with a complete open-access fee waiver, in addition to publication in hardback. “By publishing this work open-access, OUP plans to make this work available to as wide an audience as possible,” the company says, “both within and beyond academia, and unlock opportunity for those at the starts of their careers.”
Sophie Goldsworthy
Sophie Goldsworthy, the company’s director of content strategy and acquisition, is quoted in the announcement from Oxford, saying, “Our work with early-career researchers often focuses on helping scholars ensure that their work stands out,” along with a demystification of the publishing process, “but we know that open-access fees remain a barrier to many and publishing openings are limited.
“The research monograph,” Goldsworthy says, “is of pivotal importance, allowing an author the space to make a sustained argument, and with the OUP First Book Prize, we’re creating an opportunity to help disseminate the best new work as widely as possible.”
Nandini Das
Nandini Das—a professor of early modern English literature and culture at the University of Oxford, as well as the winner of the 2023 British Book Award, is an OUP delegate and is acting as adviser to the prize.
Das says the new initiative “champions the transformative power of humanities and social science research, which enables us to understand our world and its complexities in fundamental ways.
“At a time when the higher-education landscape and such research are both under ever-increasing pressure, the OUP First Book Prize will provide an international platform for excellent and original research from the next generation of scholars.”
Qualifications and Information
Eligible early career researchers are those within six years of their first academic appointments, excluding career breaks, who wish to publish their first academic books.
Applicants can be based anywhere in the world. While all eligible applicants are encouraged, the First Book Prize particularly welcomes applications from aspiring authors from under-represented backgrounds and those working on diverse subjects.
The books will be selected by an international prize committee who are looking for the most original work, especially work that blends disciplines and methodologies to create meaningful insights into complex societal problems.
Entries will be made by completing a short application form and submitting a proposal with two sample chapters from the manuscript. Book proposals should be prepared according to OUP’s guidelines, available here.
Further details will be available on January 6, the company says, when an eight-week submission period will open. More information is here.
More from Publishing Perspectives on the Association of University Presses is here, and more on university presses in general is here. More on book and publishing awards programs is here.