April Newsletter

OBP Newsletter • May 5, 2025

Open Book Publishers

A beautiful spring view of blossoming trees in a field full of flowers. Red and yellow tulips are near the front of the picture, with a carpet of pink, purple, yellow and red flowers further away, all under a pale blue sky. — The Spring path on the island of Mainau during the tulip blooming. By Haka on Wikimedia Commons, 24 April 2010, CC BY-SA.

We hope this newsletter finds you well and that your April has been rejuvenating. We write with publication announcements, new posts on academic freedom, and announcements about a book prize and a new series partnership.

Here's what happened this month:

We published five new books

Humans, Dogs and Other Beings: Myths, Stories, and History in the Land of Genghis Khan by Baasanjav Terbish

Active Speech: Critical Perspectives on Teresa Deevy by Úna Kealy and Kate McCarthy (eds.)

Tragedy and the Witness: Shakespeare and Beyond by Fred Parker

Women Writers in the Romantic Age by John Claiborne Isbell

Coral Conservation: Global Evidence for the Effects of Actions by Ann Thornton, William H. Morgan, Eleanor K. Bladon, Rebecca K. Smith, and William J. Sutherland

All of our titles are free to read and download. Explore our complete catalogue.

An image of the definition of censorship on the open page of a dictionary. — Photo by Mick Haupt on Unsplash

We shared two blog posts on academic freedom, censorship & open access

We have just published two posts—one written by our team, and one by our author Ash Lierman—reflecting on the increasing threats to academic freedom that we are seeing in the United States and elsewhere, and the role of open access in fighting back against these trends. We have released the posts today to coincide with the #DefendResearch day of action on the 100th day of the Trump presidency. Find out more about the Declaration To #DefendResearch Against U.S. Government Censorship, which OBP has signed.

A composite image of 'Grammar of Etulo' in print and digital editions, with a banner in the corner that says 'forthcoming in open access'.

We announced a new series partnership with the Philological Society

We are delighted that we have begun a partnership with the Philological Society, the oldest learned society in Great Britain devoted to the scholarly study of language and languages, to publish their book series: Publications of the Philological Society. We have listed the first two books we will publish as part of the series: A Grammar of Etulo: A Niger-Congo (Idomoid) Language by Chikelu I. Ezenwafor-Afuecheta and Benjamin Franklin, Orthoepist and Phonetician: Insights into the Genesis of Colonial American-English Phonology by Gary D. German. We look forward to sharing these and many more titles in the series via our Diamond open access model, with no barriers for readers or authors.

Composite image of Prismatic Jane Eyre in print and digital editions, alongside a quote that says 'There are so many wonderful things going on here: translation theory, book history and comparative philology, as well as a strident and refreshingly non-Eurocentric approach to doing comparative literature... I’ve no doubt that the book will become an important reference for scholars and students across a broad spectrum of literary studies. -- Samah Selim, Associate Professor, Arabic Language and Literature, Rutgers University'.

We received news of a prize-winning chapter in Prismatic Jane Eyre

We are thrilled to learn that “The Translatability of Love: The Romance Genre and the Prismatic Reception of Jane Eyre in Twentieth-Century Iran” by Kayvan Tahmasebian and Rebecca Ruth Gould, a chapter published as part of Prismatic Jane Eyre: Close-Reading a World Novel Across Languages by Reynolds et al., has won The Nineteenth Century Studies Association Article Prize. Huge congratulations to Kayvan and Rebecca!

NEW BOOK DISCOUNT: Enjoy 10% off when you spend £100 and 20% off when you spend £200 (or the equivalent in supported currencies) at OBP! The discount will be applied automatically at checkout.

That's all for this month!