Early Career Researcher First Book Prize

Submissions for 2025 now closed
Submissions for the 2025 First Book Prize closed on 3rd March. We look forward to sharing the results in due course. Please bookmark this page and follow OUP for news about 2026 submissions.

About the prize

ECR First Book Prize Committee

Prize and eligibility information

Further information

How to enter

Review process

Contact details

About the prize

Oxford University Press is delighted to announce a new, annual First Book Prize for Early Career Researchers. The inaugural prize opened for submissions in January 2025, awarding up to ten applicants with the opportunity to publish their original and innovative work fully open access.

The prize-winning books will be published fully open access on OUP’s Oxford Academic platform, with a full OA fee waiver, in addition to publication in hardback. In supporting open access publication for exceptional early career researchers, OUP aims to make this work available to a wide audience, both within and beyond academia, unlocking opportunity for those at the start of their careers.

“Early Career Researchers have to navigate many challenges, from the vagaries of the academic job market to the difficulty of finding a publisher for their work. We already work closely with different ECR groups to help demystify the publishing process and ensure their work stands out, but we know that OA fees remain a barrier to many. We believe in the pivotal importance of the research monograph, allowing an author the space to make a sustained argument. And so we wanted to create a new opportunity for the authors of first books, and to disseminate their work as widely as possible. We are excited to see the prize submissions.” - Sophie Goldsworthy, Director of Content Strategy & Acquisition

This is a thrilling new initiative that champions the transformative power of humanities and social science research, which enables us to understand our world and its complexities in fundamental ways. At a time when the higher education landscape and such research are both under ever-increasing pressure, the OUP First Book Prize will provide a global platform for excellent and original research from the next generation of scholars." - Nandini Das, Professor of Early Modern English Literature and Culture at the University of Oxford, OUP Delegate, and acting as adviser on the First Book Prize

The books will be selected by a global prize committee. The committee is looking for the most original work, especially work that blends disciplines and methodologies to create meaningful insights into complex societal problems.

ECR First Book Prize Committee

Professor Katja Franko, University of Oslo

Professor Madhu Krishnan, University of Bristol

Professor Gorgi Krlev, ESCP Business School

Professor Yujin Nagasawa, University of Oklahoma

Professor Cyrus Schayegh, Geneva Graduate Institute

Professor Emily Wilbourne, Queens College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York

Professor Natasha Wunsch, University of Fribourg

Prize and eligibility information

OUP will award up to 10 book prizes per year. Each prize will include open access publication to Oxford Academic with a full OA fee waiver. It will also include hardback print publication.

Eligible early career researchers are those working in the humanities or social sciences, within six years of their first academic appointment or the award of their PhD, whichever is later (excluding career breaks), who wish to publish their first academic book. While all eligible applicants are encouraged, the First Book Prize particularly welcomes applications from aspiring authors from underrepresented backgrounds and those working on diverse subjects.

Further information

We are looking for books which will be ready for final manuscript submission within a maximum of 2 years from the date you apply. If you are further out from completion, we encourage you to submit your application next year, for the best chance of success.

Submissions should not be under simultaneous review or under contract for a discipline-specific list at OUP. If you are unsuccessful in your application, you are welcome to submit your book to the editor responsible for your subject area.

If your book is based on a PhD thesis, there is no need to submit the full thesis and examiners reports. Only two (fully revised) chapters are required as sample material.

How to enter

1. A short application form
2. A proposal (which should be prepared according to OUP’s guidelines).
3. Two sample chapters from the manuscript (which should be presented as fully drafted book chapters, not as thesis chapters or journal articles).

All application materials should be sent by email attachment to [email protected].

Submissions for 2025 closed on 3rd March.

Review process

Submissions to the ECR First Book Prize will go through three rounds of review, and authors will be notified of the result at each stage:

1. Review by OUP editorial and Prize Committee, to determine shortlist
2. External peer review of shortlisted projects by subject matter experts
3. Final review by Prize Committee to select the winners

All prize-winning projects will be subject to approval by the Delegates of the Press.

Contact details

For further details or questions about the First Book Prize, you can contact the Early Career Researcher Team within Content Strategy & Acquisition at [email protected].