Open Access Book Prizes - ACLS
Skip to main content
Home Home
Apply Donate
  • About
    • Our History
      • ACLS Leadership
      • ACLS Centennial
    • Our Impact
    • ACLS Strategic Framework
    • Inclusive Excellence
    • Our Board
      • Structure & Governance
      • ACLS Committees
    • Funding
    • Staff
    • ACLS FAQ
  • What We Do
    • Supporting Scholars & Scholarship
      • Fellowship & Grant Programs
      • Amplifying Humanistic Scholarship
      • Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Program
      • Community College Humanities Initiative
    • Connecting Academic Networks
      • Our Work with Member Societies
      • Our Work with Member Institutions
    • Future of the Academy
      • Intentional Design for an Equitable Academy
      • Commission on Fostering and Sustaining Diverse Digital Scholarship
      • Building Blocks for A New Academy
    • Publications & Discussions
      • Publications
      • Talks and Discussions
      • ACLS Scholar Recommendations
    • Advocacy
  • Our Communities
    • Member Societies
    • Conference of Executive Officers
    • ACLS Research University Consortium
    • Associate Members
    • Affiliate Members
  • Fellowships & Grants
    • Fellowship & Grant Programs
    • Competition Deadlines
    • Recent Fellows & Grantees
      • All Awardees
      • Notable Awardees
    • Past Competitions
  • News & Events
    • Events
      • Past Event Videos
    • News
    • 2025 ACLS Annual Meeting
  • Support ACLS
    • Impact of Giving
    • 1919 Society
    • Centennial Campaign
  • Resource Library
Apply Donate
  • About
    • Our History
      • ACLS Leadership
      • ACLS Centennial
    • Our Impact
    • ACLS Strategic Framework
    • Inclusive Excellence
    • Our Board
      • Structure & Governance
      • ACLS Committees
    • Funding
    • Staff
    • ACLS FAQ
  • What We Do
    • Supporting Scholars & Scholarship
      • Fellowship & Grant Programs
      • Amplifying Humanistic Scholarship
      • Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Program
      • Community College Humanities Initiative
    • Connecting Academic Networks
      • Our Work with Member Societies
      • Our Work with Member Institutions
    • Future of the Academy
      • Intentional Design for an Equitable Academy
      • Commission on Fostering and Sustaining Diverse Digital Scholarship
      • Building Blocks for A New Academy
    • Publications & Discussions
      • Publications
      • Talks and Discussions
      • ACLS Scholar Recommendations
    • Advocacy
  • Our Communities
    • Member Societies
    • Conference of Executive Officers
    • ACLS Research University Consortium
    • Associate Members
    • Affiliate Members
  • Fellowships & Grants
    • Fellowship & Grant Programs
    • Competition Deadlines
    • Recent Fellows & Grantees
      • All Awardees
      • Notable Awardees
    • Past Competitions
  • News & Events
    • Events
      • Past Event Videos
    • News
    • 2025 ACLS Annual Meeting
  • Support ACLS
    • Impact of Giving
    • 1919 Society
    • Centennial Campaign
  • Resource Library

Open Access Book Prizes

  • ACLS Open Book Prize + Arcadia Open Access Publishing Award
    • Competition
    • FAQ
    • 2024 Prizes

For Publishers

Yes! We welcome open access monographs in either category (history or multimodal) that were published in English between 2017 and 2022.

We understand that digital publications are typically very collaborative in nature. While monographs are often single-authored works, multimodal digital projects often feature a variety of content types and contributors.

For both competition categories, the monograph is defined as a long-form scholarly argument on a single subject in the humanities or interpretative social sciences. The argument should offer a unique contribution to the field and be clearly articulated by the author(s).

Media types other than text (e.g., images, audiovisual resources, data visualizations) in a multimodal monograph should contribute directly to the work’s single, sustained argument. Edited collections, in which contributors present a variety of arguments around a single theme, are not considered monographs. Neither are scholarly editions, in which one or more authors offer commentary/analysis on an original source text. Digital media or archival collections presented without an explicit long-form argument are not considered monographs for the purposes of this competition.

Born-digital monographs are pushing the boundaries of what a monograph can be. We will continue to refine our expectations for the multimodal category in subsequent years of the competition.

The questions in the Access and Accessibility section of the application are intentionally open ended, including the one about metrics. We understand that publishers have differing levels of access to tools that provide metrics, and that these tools have likely changed over time. We encourage you to provide numbers if they are readily available, but we also welcome qualitative data that help us to better understand the publication’s reach.

For Authors

No. Publishers must submit all entries. But we encourage you to contact your editor about the possibility of entering the competition if you published an eligible open access monograph between 2017 and 2022.

All open access books are digital, and most take the form of a conventional e-book.

The distinction is that open access books are available to readers completely free of charge. An e-book that is only available for purchase or through a subscription is not open access.

Home

Formed in 1919, ACLS is a nonprofit federation of 81 scholarly organizations. As the preeminent representative of American scholarship in the humanities and interpretive social sciences, ACLS holds a core belief that knowledge is a public good.

  • Online Fellowship and Grant Administration (OFA) Portals
  • ACLS FAQ
  • Employment
  • Stay In Touch
  • Privacy Policy
Apply Donate
Follow Us
  • LinkedIn
  • Instagram
  • Bluesky
  • Facebook
  • YouTube
  • Medium
633 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017-6706 Telephone: 212-697-1505
© 2025 American Council of Learned Societies.