CounterPress, a new publisher focusing in critical theory and radical thinking, has just been announced. The publisher is an offshoot of Critical Legal Thinking, a blog “to enable crit­ical legal schol­ars to make pub­lic inter­ven­tions.”

CounterPress will offer “reasonably priced” printed books, in addition to a digital “pay-as-you-can” model. Counterpress seeks to offer “crit­ical legal schol­ars and allied the­or­ists, philo­soph­ers, and other trans/​inter-​disciplinary aca­dem­ics an altern­at­ive to tra­di­tional book pub­lish­ers.”

So far, CounterPress has announced 4 titles, “Being Social: The Social and Legal Bond in Poststructuralism,” “Introduction to Critical Finance Law,” “The Other Critical Legal Studies” and The “Politics of Law and the Logic of Rupture.”

From Critical Legal Thinking:

Today, we would like to announce the cre­ation of a new, not-​for-​profit, open access pub­lisher of books that will provide crit­ical legal schol­ars and allied the­or­ists, philo­soph­ers, and other trans/​inter-​disciplinary aca­dem­ics an altern­at­ive to tra­di­tional book pub­lish­ers. We have named this new pub­lisher Coun­ter­press.

In addi­tion to prin­ted books offered at reas­on­able prices and pur­chas­able via tra­di­tional and vir­tual book­shops, we will provide e-​book ver­sions on a pay-​what-​you-​can basis. A full open access option will also be made avail­able. In short, our books will be part of the global com­mons, access­ible to all regard­less of per­sonal wealth.

Coun­ter­press will hope­fully appeal to aca­dem­ics and stu­dents, but as with CLT, we would also like to reach bey­ond this tra­di­tional audi­ence. We will pub­lish three types of books, emphas­iz­ing rad­ical polit­ical and the­or­et­ical engage­ments with the world:

• The first type of pro­ject will be a ‘sup­ple­ments’ series. These will be shorter books, aimed at a broad audi­ence, much like an exten­ded pamph­let or pocket-​book.
• The second type of pro­ject will be an ‘exchanges’ series. These will involve dir­ect con­front­a­tions or cooper­a­tions between a num­ber of thinkers, on a par­tic­u­lar topic or body of thought.
• Finally, we will pur­sue the more tra­di­tional style of aca­demic pub­lic­a­tions: edited col­lec­tions, read­ers, text­books and mono­graphs on rad­ical philo­sophy, legal and crit­ical theory.

We already have a num­ber of excel­lent book pro­pos­als, a selec­tion of which you can read on the Coun­ter­press web­site. We invite fur­ther pro­pos­als and/​or full manu­scripts, which, to ensure the highest qual­ity, will be sub­ject to peer review by our edit­or­ial board.

We are very excited about this new ini­ti­at­ive. By its very nature it poses a chal­lenge to the privat­iz­ing of aca­demic know­ledge, the pos­sess­ive indi­vidu­al­ism of copy­right, and the access restric­tions to learn­ing mater­i­als in a world of uneven glob­al­isa­tion. Coun­ter­press is our con­tri­bu­tion to the ‘Aca­demic Spring’. We hope you will join and sup­port us. For more, please visit coun​ter​press​.org​.uk.

Be sure to follow CounterPress on Twitter and Facebook.

Are you involved with an open access journal or other organization? Do you have news for us? Let us know at [email protected].