Academic and professional content for the developing world

Welcoming Bloomsbury to Research4Life

We’re excited to welcome Bloomsbury Publishing as a new partner in the Research4Life programme. As a leading academic book publisher, particularly in the humanities and social sciences, Bloomsbury brings valuable depth and diversity to the resources available to our users around the world.

This collaboration reflects a shared commitment to making knowledge more accessible, particularly in areas where access to scholarly books can be limited. As part of the partnership, users in many Research4Life countries will gain access to Bloomsbury Collections, a growing eBook platform featuring over 30,000 titles across key subject areas such as politics, development, education, anthropology, law, and more. The platform is built around primary academic research and includes work by authors from across the world.

To hear more about why this partnership matters and how Bloomsbury is working to widen access, we caught up with Kathryn Earle, Managing Director at Bloomsbury Digital Resources.

How do you see your participation in Research4Life contributing to your organization’s mission?

Bloomsbury’s non-consumer division, including Bloomsbury Digital Resources (BDR) and Academic & Professional, has long recognised the importance of widening access to its scholarly content. To enable this, we have an expanding open access programme for our books content. We see Research4Life as an important partner in broadening access to knowledge.

What are your thoughts on the importance of access to research in low- and middle-income countries?

Much focus has understandably been on STEM, but the humanities and social sciences have so much to offer the world in terms of quality of life, from mental health to careers to the arts. These disciplines offer crucial insights into the most pressing issues affecting our world today. We believe our content will help to underscore this.

Do you participate in any other initiatives that provide access to your content in developing countries? How do these initiatives complement Research4Life?

In 2023, Bloomsbury announced the launch of a pilot programme for a new collective-action funding model for open access books. Bloomsbury Open Collections spreads the cost of open access publications across multiple organisations while providing private benefits to participating libraries. Bloomsbury was the first commercial publisher to pilot such a model, and aims to reach and engage a more diverse set of authors, bringing their work to a wider global audience.

Unlike traditional open access models, which typically rely on an individual or their funder or institution paying a fee (or ‘book processing charge’) to cover the costs of publishing, this collective-action approach seeks to spread the cost more equitably across multiple institutions. This approach enables open access publication for research communities that may otherwise lack resources thereby opening up important new research and publishing opportunities for these scholars.

Earlier in 2025 we announced that in its second year Bloomsbury Open Collections had secured funding to make 24 further titles open access at no cost to the authors. This builds on an initial 10 titles that were published open access as part of the pilot year.

The programme prioritises titles and amplifies authors based in low- and middle-income countries, unaffiliated authors, early-career researchers and those who are otherwise under-represented in scholarly publishing.

The focus is on African Studies & International Development, Environment & Climate Change and Gender & Sexuality publishing. Following the success of the 2024-25 expansion, in 2025-26 Bloomsbury Open Collections will continue to offer three collections of 20 titles in each of these areas.

Bloomsbury Open Collections is part of our wider open access offering, which now includes well over 100 titles published each year. With over 500 open access books published to date, we are committed to evolving our programme and adapting to change as the demand for open access increases.

Find out more about Bloomsbury’s collective-action approach to funding open access.