Books in the Signale series are now to be available on an open access basis four years after publication. Signale has always made a portion of each book in the series available for free online – 50% of the text of most books is accessible as soon as they are published, in a read-only display. Now, Signale’s publishers, Cornell University Press and Cornell University Library, are pleased to announce a new program that will provide open access to more of the Signale material and make the open content more useable. The program provides open access to fully-functional, downloadable PDFs of Signale books, in their entirety, after an interval of four years from their initial publication. John Griffith Urang’s 2010 book, Legal Tender: Love and Legitimacy in the East German Cultural Imagination, is the first Signale title to reach this four-year mark and thus the first to be opened in this way.

The open access titles are delivered via Project MUSE, where current Signale books are available for institutional licensing. Signale books are can also be licensed from the Books at JSTOR program.

While copyright restrictions will exempt certain books in the series, the open access program will apply to the vast majority of Signale titles over time.