DARIAH-EU is launching an annual Open Access Book Bursary for the publication of one’s first monograph within the domain of Digital Humanities. The bursary will fund the Open Access publication of one monograph (or other long form of scholarship) per year.
By doing so, DARIAH-EU aims to further strengthen its long-standing commitment to pave pathways to the open research culture as it specifically pertains to arts and humanities disciplines and to enable early career researchers, who are usually less privileged in institutional Open Access grants, to openly disseminate their first monographs in book series that are topically most relevant for their field of interest.
In terms of publishing venues, the bursary aims to support community-driven, fair players and therefore publication in a DOAB certified, fair Open Access publication venue with transparent pricing and in alignment with the SPARC Good Practice Principles with Scholarly Communication Services is set as an absolute eligibility criterion.
* We use the term ‘monograph’ in a sense that it includes all long forms of scholarship.
Call for Manuscripts
Exploring and supporting pathways into the open research culture for Arts and Humanities scholars is among the strategic commitments of DARIAH. One of the most complex challenges that scholars repeatedly voice in our advocacy practice is publishing one’s first monograph Open Access. Although there is an increasing support from science funders to extend their Open Access mandates to books, and to cover the costs of Book Publishing Charges, first monographs typically come from PhD dissertations, not externally funded research projects. Likewise, even though some of the research institutions have transformative agreements and/or institutional Open Access funds in place, these are not always available for non-permanent (or non-tenured) faculty members and usually do not cover the whole publication charges (BPCs) of a monograph published in the book series that is topically the most relevant to Early Career Researchers (ECRs).
This gap in the Open Access funding structures is not the only difficulty ECRs are facing when they wish to publish their first monograph Open Access. A well-known and frequently voiced challenge is that due to the very strong influence of the prestige economy on the current academic tenure and promotion criteria, in most cases, young scholars still need to choose between their academic career prospects vs. publishing in fair Open Access venues (and all the societal, economic and scholarly benefits that come with it).
Therefore, it is clear that in parallel to our ongoing efforts and commitments of different kinds to change this situation for the better and enable the full transition of scholarly communication to responsible and community-driven means of Open Access on a systemic level, we need to provide immediate help to ECRs to enable them to start from a strong position in terms of formal assessment but also to practice their ethical devotion and establish themselves as scholars who significantly contribute to the fair and open research culture.
The DARIAH OA monograph bursary aims to serve as a modest but immediate contribution to ease the current anomalies and support those who are the less privileged in this respect but could possibly achieve the biggest change in academic culture and beyond.
For more details about the considerations behind the call, read here.
Eligibility criteria and evaluation workflow
Eligibility criteria
Criteria regarding the APPLICANTS:
- The call is open for Early Career Researchers who wish to publish their first monograph Open Access.
- The call is exclusive for Early Career Researchers whose PhDs are awarded (or to be awarded) in DARIAH member countries or are having professional affiliation (academic or alt-ac) in a DARIAH member country.
- The DARIAH affiliation of the author or a funding statement must be clearly identifiable in the publication, preferably even as part of the metadata.
We follow the European Research Council’s definition of ECRs: Researchers up to 7 years after PhD, including doctoral candidates who did not earn their title yet.
Criteria regarding the topic of the BOOK:
- Field: Digital Humanities (defined in the broad sense of the theory and practice of developing, applying and reflecting upon digital tools, methods and assets in humanities research).
- Refundable are Open Access monographs that have not been published previously. PhD dissertations deposited in institutional repositories and/or published on microfilms are also eligible with the agreement of the publisher.
- Enclosing an Expression of interest letter from the publisher is a must.
Criteria regarding the VENUE and FORMAT:
- Funding will be granted only if the publisher provides transparent calculation for the invoiced Open Access costs. Open Access Publication Costs must be shown separately on the invoice.
- The publisher should be listed as an open-access publisher, e.g. in the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB).
- The publisher should operate in alignment with the SPARC Good Practice Principles with Scholarly Communication Services.
- Publishers who provide Persistent Identifiers to OA books are preferred.
- Innovative forms of publication (those going beyond the PDF, e.g. networked monographs, data sharing, XML format, the integration of TEI encodings etc.) will be encouraged.
Criteria regarding the ACCESS CONDITIONS:
- In order to receive funding, all parts of the submitted publication must be openly accessible free of charge immediately and completely as soon as they are published.
- The publication must be published under a Creative Commons license (preferably the Creative Commons Attribution CC BY but more restrictive Creative Commons licenses are also possible).
Details of the FUNDING:
- Publication costs will be covered up to the maximum of 7,000 EUR (incl. VAT). In exceptional cases and with sufficient justification, a maximum of 500 EUR extension is possible (for instance, extra charges for a CC-BY license).
- The combination of funding with other sources is not possible.
- The funding is strictly available for Open Access publishing cost. Support for the cost of printing or typesetting is not available.
- The funding approval is valid for a period of 12 months after signing the grant agreement. If the publication has not been published within that period, the applicant will have to submit a new application.
- Recipients should be responsible for the agreement on the fee and contract with the publisher.
- Beneficiaries are required to add a DARIAH funding acknowledgement in the books following the template specified in the grant agreement.
Evaluation workflow
Evaluation of the submissions is proposed to happen on two levels:
- Primary filtering is done by asking for an Expression of interest letter from the publisher - this way we can start from a higher baseline and it is also ensured that publishers indeed have interest in publishing the works of the winners.
- Secondary filtering/decision making is done by an internal DARIAH body based on the book proposal + one chapter.
Timeline
- Application deadline: 6 December 2021
- Announcement of the winner: January 2022
- Setting up and signature of an agreement between DARIAH and the author: February/March 2022
- Start of the project: upon signature of the agreement
- Duration: 1 year
How to apply
Applications should be submitted at oamonograph@dariah.eu
List of the documents to be submitted:
- CV
- Letter of interest from the publisher
- Book proposal
- One chapter of the manuscript.
Questions?
Should you have any further questions, please contact DARIAH’s Open Science Officer, Erzsébet Tóth-Czifra (erzsebet.toth-czifra@dariah.eu) for more details.
In June, an information session will be organised where applicants can ask further questions in a live chat.
