Funder: American Council of Learned Societies
Due Dates (Anticipated): February 2027 (Submission deadline)
Funding Amounts: Per winning category: $20,000 for authors and $30,000 for publishers to support new open access titles
Summary: Recognizes outstanding open access humanities scholarship and publishers’ accessibility practices while supporting new open access books.
Key Information: Publishers must submit nominations; authors cannot apply independently.
Description
The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), with support from Arcadia, pairs a book prize for authors with a publishing award for the press behind each winning title. The competition recognizes original, compelling humanistic scholarship with demonstrated impact on scholarly conversations or nonacademic audiences. The publisher award supports the publication of new open access titles.
The awards also recognize efforts to make scholarship widely accessible through inclusive design, technology, distribution, and marketing. The 2026 categories covered anthropology, environmental humanities, history, literary/media studies, political science, and multimodal works in any humanistic discipline. Multimodal entries are assessed for digital components that advance the central argument, intuitive navigation, integration of text and digital content, and preservation planning.
