Our Business Model

We’re committed to publishing the best scholarship in the social sciences and humanities AND for our content to be as widely accessible as possible.    

Selected research publications are published on open content licences, meaning that the full text is available online for free in html format. These titles are also available to buy as pbooks and ebooks. The licences that we currently use are as follows:

  • Bloomsbury Open - This licence means you are free to share this work for non-commercial purposes only, providing you give attribution to the copyright holder and the publisher. You may not alter or transform this work without explicit permission in writing from Bloomsbury Publishing. Please contact us to apply for permission

For a list of all our open-content titles, please click here.

Unlike open-access journals we are not looking for authors (or their research funders) to pay for the publishing process. Yet the debate over whether or not free availability (in whatever eformat) increases or decreases sales rages on, not just in publishing but also in the music and film industries. Pilot projects in academic publishing are beginning to indicate that free content actually promotes sales. We hope that our experiment in making our research-led content available free will generate a sustainable business model that supports research and fosters wide scholarly communications.   

Research and teaching are inextricably linked and so in 2009 we purchased a superb backlist of upper level textbooks from Hodder Arnold to complement our research-led publications. In 2010 we bought the world renowned Classics list from Duckworth Academic and Bristol Classical Press.These titles were not conceived to appear on open content licenses. However, where possible we are loading two chapters to be available to view online. We are discussing experimental models which will see us opening up our content as much as possible.

Finally, in 2011, we acquired Continuum. Click here for more information. These titles have not yet been fully integrated into the Bloomsbury Academic website, but soon we will have a complete digital platform that will host everything in the Bloomsbury Academic portfolio. Watch this space!

Please sign up for more information. Additionally, we welcome your feedback. Please contact us if you have any comments or suggestions.