As our readers may have spotted, Arc’s Open Access output is expanding. Back in 2020 we produced
just four OA titles, whereas in 2023 we hope to reach seven or eight. Our OA programme has been
given welcome impetus by collaboration with ANZAMEMS, and our New Voices scheme, now in its
second year. New Voices presents a selection of the best new books Arc is publishing, with a
particular focus on early career researchers, and gives crowd-funders the opportunity to choose
where to award OA funding. So far, those choosing the book have been the library crowd-funders
we’ve signed up. This year, we are offering members of our mailing list the opportunity to get
involved. Pledge anything from $100 upwards towards our OA fund for your chance to vote on which
book(s) slated for publication this year will be published as Gold Open Access titles.
We chose $100 as the starting point because that’s round about the starting price for one of our
monographs. Think about it this way – by paying roughly the price you would pay for a physical or
digital book, not only do you get access to the chosen book, but you also get the chance to open up
its readership to everyone else. We think that this reasoning will chime with Arc’s readers! The five
books due to be published in 2023 that we’ve selected as prospective candidates for the New Voices
Gold Open Access scheme are:
- David Clark, Children’s Literature and Old Norse Medievalism
- Matthew Coker, Supernatural Speakers in Old English Verse: Poetic and Spiritual Power in Early Medieval Society
- Susan Shifrin (ed), The Museum as Experience
- Christopher Swift, Ritual, Spectacle, and Theatre in Late Medieval Seville: Performing Empire
- Usha Vishnuvajjala, Feminist Medievalisms