March 1, 2024 – All open monograph grants based on the 5-year TOME pilot at Duke have now been awarded! We are not accepting new applications at this time.


Many academic monographs achieve limited distribution–a print run of only a few hundred copies, and electronic access (if available at all) locked away behind a paywall. We believe the potential audience for Duke scholarship is much greater. The Duke Open Monograph Award aims to meet that potential by making your work available to the widest possible audience of readers.

The Duke Open Monograph Award is a five-year pilot funded by the Duke University Libraries to facilitate greater access to Duke faculty scholarship through open access publishing. The award will provide $15,000 per academic monograph—paid to a participating university press publisher on the author’s behalf—to make a digital copy of the monograph available free of charge on the open web under a Creative Commons license through sites such as the Directory of Open Access Books, HathiTrust, Internet Archive, JSTOR’s Open Content, MuseOpen, and OAPEN Library.

The Duke Open Monograph Award is a part of a collaborative project developed by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), the Association of American Universities (AAU), and the Association of University Presses (AUP) called Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem (TOME), which is an effort to make more scholarly monographs openly available on a broad scale. Duke is one of twenty participating colleges and universities, all committed to opening access to scholarly books published by their faculty. Monographs funded under this award will pass through the same rigorous peer-review and professional editing process as any other monograph published by the specified publisher but will be made openly available online as well as through traditional distribution channels.

Eligibility

  • Awards are available to current full-time members of the Duke faculty. Tenure-track and tenured faculty, as well as non-tenure-track faculty with long-term appointments, are eligible to apply.
  • Monographs eligible for funding are new monographs, not previously published, that are generally aimed at a scholarly audience using in-depth research methods. Monographs can be aimed at a broader readership, but must adhere to academic standards of research and citation. This fund does not cover critical editions, edited anthologies, creative works, textbooks, or translations of previously published works.
  • Over sixty of the world’s leading university presses are participating in the TOME initiative. The Association of University Presses has a complete list of participating publishers.  Duke will accept applications for monographs published by presses listed by AUP as participating in TOME.
  • Authors at Duke Kunshan University are not eligible for funding at this time.

How do I apply for funding?

Applications will be accepted starting July 1, 2018 and will be awarded on a rolling basis. Duke University Libraries has committed to funding up to three Duke-faculty authored books (at $15,000 per book) per year. Applicants must submit [the form is now closed], which requires an executive summary of the content of your monograph and your goals for making your monograph openly available online (approximately 300-500 words). Applicants must also submit a letter of support from the chair of your department (or your school’s equivalent) as well as a letter of interest from your publisher, on the publisher’s letterhead. We strongly encourage authors to contact Duke’s Librarian for Education and Open Scholarship, Haley Walton (haley.walton@duke.edu), to discuss your application before you apply.  

Where can I address questions about my eligibility and application?

You can contact open-access@duke.edu, or Haley Walton, Librarian for Education and Open Scholarship, at haley.walton@duke.edu.


Past Open Monograph Award Winners

2019

The Anti-Japan: The Politics of Sentiment in Postcolonial East Asia

Dr. Leo Ching, Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies

Duke University Press

[Download from DukeSpace]

The Fixer: Visa Lottery Chronicles

Dr. Charles Piot, Professor of Cultural Anthropology

Duke University Press

[Download from DukeSpace]

Infectious Liberty: Biopolitics Between Romanticism and Liberalism

Dr. Robert Edward Mitchell, Professor of English

Fordham University Press

[Download from DukeSpace]

2020

State of Empowerment: Low-Income Family and the New Welfare State

Dr. Carolyn Barnes, Assistant Professor in the Sanford School of Public Policy

University of Michigan Press

[Download from DukeSpace]

The Audacious Raconteur: Storytelling and Sovereignty in Colonial India

Dr. Leela Prasad, Professor of Religious Studies

Cornell University Press

[Download from DukeSpace]

Revolution and Disenchantment: Arab Marxism and the Binds of Emancipation

Dr. Fadi A. Bardawil, Associate Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies

Duke University Press

[Download from DukeSpace]

2021

Buried in the Red Dirt: Race, Reproduction, and Death in Modern Palestine

Dr. Frances Hasso, Professor of Gender, Sexuality, & Feminist Studies

Cambridge University Press

[Download from DukeSpace]

Funding Bodies: Five Decades of Dance Making at the National Endowment for the Arts

Dr. Sarah Wilbur, Assistant Professor of the Practice of Dance

Wesleyan University Press

[Download from DukeSpace]

Lifelines: The Traffic of Trauma in India

Dr. Harris Solomon, Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology

Duke University Press

[Download from DukeSpace]

2022

The Brothers Grimm and the Making of German Nationalism

Dr. Jakob Norberg, Professor of German Studies

Cambridge University Press

[Download from DukeSpace]

Capoeira Connections: A Memoir in Motion

Dr. Katya Wesolowski, Lecturing Fellow of Cultural Anthropology

University Press of Florida

[Download from DukeSpace]

Two or More: A Comparative Analysis of Multiracial and Multicultural Research

Dr. Sarah Gaither, Assistant Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience

Cambridge University Press

[Download from DukeSpace]