Fellowships Open Book Program
Office of Digital Humanities
Grant Snapshot
Maximum award amount
Open to
Expected output
Period of performance
Application available
Application due
Expected notification date
Project start date
The Fellowships Open Book Program is a limited competition designed to make outstanding humanities books available to a wide audience. By taking advantage of low-cost “ebook” technology, the program will allow teachers, students, scholars, and the public to read humanities books that can be downloaded or redistributed for no charge.
This limited competition is open to publishers who have published within the last three years (or will publish during the period of performance) a book whose research was supported by one of the following six NEH fellowship programs Fellowships; Awards for Faculty at Hispanic-Serving Institutions; Awards for Faculty at Historically Black Colleges and Universities; Awards for Faculty at Tribal Colleges and University; Fellowships for Advanced Social Science Research on Japan; or Public Scholars.
Each ebook will be released under a Creative Commons license, making those books free for anyone to download. The book could be a forthcoming title (to be open access upon first release) or it could be a book that was first released at any time during or after calendar year 2018.
This program utilizes a greatly streamlined application process and there are three proposal deadlines per year: March 15, 2021; July 15, 2021, and November 15, 2021.
Learn more about previous Fellowship Open Book awards.
New for 2021
- A simplified application process that no longer requires publication statistics.
- Simplified eligibility criteria that now includes forthcoming books as well as any books published in 2018 or later.
Begin by reading the Notice of Funding Opportunity below to ensure you understand the expectations and restrictions for projects delivered under this grant and are prepared to write the most effective application.
Application Materials
- Fellowships Open Book Program Notice of Funding Opportunity, 2021 (PDF)
- Fellowship Open Book Application Package
Program Resources
To apply for this grant, you will be need to be registered for a D-U-N-S® number, with the System for Awards Management (SAM), and with Grants.gov. If you have registered with these systems previously, confirm that your registrations are current and up to date. If you fail to allow ample time to complete registration with SAM or Grants.gov, you will not be eligible for a deadline extension or waiver of the online electronic submission requirement.
Be sure to follow the instructions outlined in the notice of funding opportunity and in the Grants.gov instructions.
You will receive a confirmation from Grants.gov when you've successfully submitted your application.
After you submit your application, Grants.gov will send you up to five e-mail messages confirming receipt of your application. These messages represent different stages in the application acceptance process. You should verify that you have received all confirmation messages. Please note that email filters may send these messages to your spam or junk folder.