The Health Humanities Press invites authors and scholars from the humanities and health care professions to share narratives and analysis on health, healing, and the contexts of our beliefs and practices that impact biomedical inquiry. Our mission is to support authors with production and distribution of their work and build community through print and digital publications. The Health Humanities Press is not a commercial publisher, but a non-profit, academic publishing program that has received support through grants provided by the University of California Office of the President, the Dean of Medicine at UCSF, and the Department of Humanities & Social Sciences at UCSF. We also gratefully acknowledge the voluntary service to the profession provided by the faculty who serve on the editorial board.
MISSION STATEMENT
Our mission is to build community in the medical and health humanities by providing publishing opportunities for humanities and social science scholars, healthcare professionals, and non-academic writers to share perspectives on social, cultural, ethical, and humanistic meanings attached to healthcare. We are committed to open access (OA) publishing to remove barriers created by subscription paywalls or pay-to-read access that prevent many communities from engaging with and benefitting from health humanities scholarship.
Our Publishing Platforms
We focus on community building rather than commercialization. While our books are printed on demand for purchase through e-retailers like Amazon and Barnes & Noble, all our books are made available for free, through an open-access platform managed by the University of California eScholarship Repository. Our mission is to support authors who have critical and creative stories to share, and to explore the frontiers of distribution using the range of platforms available to small publishers.
The Business Model of OA Publishing
We do not consider scholarly publishing to be a commercial activity, where books are commodities deemed valuable according to how much profit each unit returns. Rather, we believe that peer-review approved work gains value when it is available to everyone, promoting greater engagement and benefit to a global community.
Cost are always involved in the production and distribution of scholarly or creative works. The labor involved in peer review, copy-editing, graphic design, digital file management, and program management generates a cost. Some costs in book production relate to material, such as fees to obtain ISBNs or printing book proofs and providing complimentary review copies upon publication.
The challenge we face is how we can meet those costs efficiently and through non-commercial means in order to increase dissemination and availability. To meet these front-end costs, we charge basic publishing fees.
Financing
Our book processing charge (BPC) is based on an analysis of 10 years of publishing where we have worked closely with copy-editors, designers, and third-party distribution companies to cost the work involved in the publication process. It is also aligned with allied open-access publishers, such as UCL Press. See below for BPC waivers and considerations for subventions to assist in our fees.
Please note, there are no costs to anyone for publishing an article in the Perspectives in Medical Humanities occasional paper series or in our digital essay series.
Full-service publishing fees are as follows:
- Books up to 100,000 words – $5,000
- Books of 100,000 – 150,000 words – $6,000
- Books exceeding 150,000 words — $7,000
Fee Waivers
We have received generous support through grants from the UC Office of the President and UCSF School of Medicine for our open-access publishing program, which allows us to produce three books a year for authors under a fee waiver. UC faculty receive priority for this opportunity.
However, authors from institutions who do not have publishing assistance programs or independent scholars can apply for a fee waiver and will be considered on a first-come-first-serve basis, contingent on availability. This will be provided to authors as subventions to assist in meeting some or all production costs.
SUBMIT
The Press welcomes submissions of original manuscripts for the book series, articles for the Perspectives in Medical Humanities journal, or essays for the “Through History” occasional paper series (Digital Essays / Supplements). Inquiries should be sent to General Editor, Dr. Brian Dolan. Initial review of proposals determines whether the project is within our publishing scope, but publishing contracts are only offered upon receipt of full manuscripts and following peer review.
HISTORY & SUPPORT
The Press was established with help from—but as an independent entity of—the University of California Press and California Digital Library in 2010. The Health Humanities Press and its editorial work has been funded through two separate grants from the University of California Office of the President as part of a Multi-Campus Research Program Initiative that formed the UC Medical Humanities Consortium (PI Dr. Brian Dolan (UCSF), co-PIs Dr. Johanna Shapiro (UC Irvine), Dr. Guy Micco (UC Berkeley), and Dr. Faith Fitzgerald (UC Davis). Grant IDs UCOP 141374 (2010-2015) and UCOP MR-15-328363 (2015-2019). Since 2019, the Press has been supported by the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at UCSF, the UCSF School of Medicine Dean’s Office, and through subventions from authors and institutions to assist in the production of scholarship.
We are a non-profit, academic Press that is committed to open access scholarship. Hard copies of works are often available through print-on-demand services that we make available through online retailers.
EDITORIAL BOARD
Nancy Burke, PhD (University of California, Merced) Anthropology / Medical Anthropology
Brian Dolan, PhD (General Editor) (UCSF) History of Medicine, Narrative Medicine
Silvia Camporesi, PhD (King’s College, London) Bioethics
Guy Micco, MD (UC Berkeley) Poetry
Cristina Nigro, MS, PhD (National Institutes of Health) Philosophy, Neuroscience
Mark Parascandola, PhD, MPH (NIH National Cancer Institute) Ethics, Epidemiology, Photography
Dorothy Porter, PhD (UCSF) History, Public Health