On Brand: Duke Faculty Publishes Open Access Book on Modern History of Japanese Advertising

Post by Matthew Hayes, Librarian for Japanese Studies and Asian American Studies, and Haley Walton, Librarian for Education and Open Scholarship

Colorful advertisements for the high fashion, food, and beauty products of twentieth-century Japan dot the pages of a new book by Gennifer Weisenfeld, Walter H. Annenberg Distinguished Professor of Art and Art History, which is now available for free download as an open access ebook supported by the Duke University Libraries’ Open Monograph Award.

The Fine Art of Persuasion: Corporate Advertising Design, Nation, and Empire in Modern Japan (Duke University Press, 2025) is one of fifteen books by Duke authors to be published openly in an effort to make innovative scholarship in the humanities and social sciences available to anyone in the world without paywalls. Grants for these books were awarded as part of the national Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem (TOME) initiative and selected by the Libraries for their outstanding academic rigor and new contributions to scholarship in their field.

Many academic books have only a small print run of a few hundred copies and electronic access also comes with a price tag. The Libraries believe that the research done at Duke can have a global impact and chooses to invest in openness across the disciplines, allowing books like The Fine Art of Persuasion be free to download anywhere, by anyone, in the world.

We caught up with Professor Weisenfeld and asked her about her experience publishing her newest book open access:

I think there will be a lot of interest in a broad array of curricular settings to adopt this book and I wanted it to be readily available to anyone. Academic books tend to be expensive, especially books in art history that have higher production value with extensive illustrations. This can become a cost barrier for access. I know [TOME support] will propel the book forward to reach a much broader audience over the course of its lifetime. This means a lot to me and will definitely increase the impact of my scholarship among a national and global readership, particularly students.

Professor Weisenfeld will give a book talk on The Fine Art of Persuasion on April 10, 2025, in the Holsti-Anderson Family Assembly Room at Rubenstein Library. We invite you to join us to hear more about the book and the publication process.