“We will not be buying your book,” they responded to me after I had informed them that my monograph, Performing Power in Nigeria: Identity, Politics, and Pentecostalism, was being published by Cambridge University Press. They were my colleagues and co-researchers, based in Nigeria and Ghana, who were excited for me, but were also frustrated with their inability to access the latest books being published because of the prohibitive costs of procuring them online. Indeed, people living in the Global South cannot take access to knowledge for granted because they have to grapple with the wide disparities of foreign currency exchange and the differentials of income. Their frustration got me thinking. Truly, what was the point of publishing a book about Nigeria but which would likely not be read by Nigerians because it was priced out of their reach?

Thus, it was quite serendipitous when my Cambridge Editor told me about Flip it Open, the Open Access project they were piloting. One of the goals of the project is for knowledge to be more broadly disseminated, especially in locations where people would otherwise be cut off from access. The idea is that once the book hits a set revenue threshold, Cambridge make the title Open Access via Cambridge Core, meaning anyone, anywhere is able to access it. Reaching this threshold also triggers the publication of a paperback version, now likely to be published months ahead of schedule were my book not in this pilot.

This Open Access model is a decision every book publisher should be considering right now. More book and journal publishers should make the academic materials they publish free for public use. We already live in a world where sites like YouTube allow us to freely access various materials that range from newly-released music videos to recipes to the how-to of virtually any craft. Why should (often publicly-funded) research be inaccessible because of cost? As someone who writes and researches Nigerian/African practices, I also see opening access to readers as a sensible decision because the communities we work with during our fieldwork should not have to break the bank to read, or respond to, what we write about them.

That said, I should also note that making books openly accessible is only the first step towards ending the intellectual exclusion that separates scholars in more affluent countries from their counterparts elsewhere. For instance, when I am researching in Nigeria, I cannot help but notice the vast differences between what the algorithms of Google Scholar bring up versus when I am in the USA. In the latter location, I am swamped with dozens of materials I can either procure on Amazon with generous research allowances or merely pick up from the library. It is so efficient that the privilege can be taken for granted. However, on the other side of the Atlantic, Google Scholar is relatively a dry land. Our globalized world and modern technology are breaking down all kinds of structural barriers across time and space. The walls that separate people from the books that potentially enrich them need to go. That is why I look forward to you accessing my book, barrier-free.