Publishing house Bloomsbury Publishing, UK, has announced its entry into academic publishing with a new imprint: Bloomsbury Academic. All books will be made available free of charge online, with free downloads, for non-commercial purposes immediately upon publication, using Creative Commons licences. The works will also be sold as books using the latest short-run technologies or print-on-demand (POD).
Bloomsbury Academic will initially publish in the fields of social sciences and humanities. It will seeks to build thematic lists on pressing global issues, with about 50 new titles online and in print by the end of 2009. The imprint will be using the latest solutions in digital publishing and open access, whilst maintaining traditional publishing services. It will provide editorial selection, peer-review, copy-editing and formatting, along with marketing and distribution worldwide. Authors will retain their copyright and their works will come faster to publication, without long production and promotion cycles. They can be searched more easily, and need never go out of print.
The Bloomsbury Academic platform (www.bloomsburyacademic.com) will also be available to showcase and promote other publishers' titles. The initiative is not exclusively in the English language and Bloomsbury's German partner, Berlin Verlag, will be participating actively. While Bloomsbury USA is involved in North America, Bloomsbury is in discussions with Melbourne University Publishing to showcase the best of Australian scholarship.
