Opening the Future, Author Profile: Peter Watson

Peter Watson’s book, Football and Nation Building in Colombia (2010-2018) was published by Liverpool University Press in 2022. The book was published open access, thanks to funding provided by Copim’s collective library funding model, ‘Opening the Future’. Using Opening the Future, Liverpool University Press is able to raise money for new open access titles in an equitable and reliable way, and without charging authors or their institutions fees. Readers around the world can access Watson’s OA ebook for free via platforms like DOAB and JSTOR. Since publication, the text has already been accessed by readers over 3,000 times.1

At Copim, we’re delighted that funding provided by Opening the Future enabled Watson (Teaching Fellow in the Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies department at the University of Leeds) to publish his work without the barrier of a Book Processing Charge, and that readers can now access his research for free. As one reviewer noted, “Watson’s book contains plenty of academic theory, but it is accessibly written”,2 and his topic will be of interest to a wide range of readers both inside and outside of academia. As another reviewer noted, Football and Nation Building in Colombia represents a

“significant step forward in our understanding of the scope of the multiple political connections between nation-states and popular sports in Latin America, setting an example of productive ways to analyze the potential activation of sports as platforms and spaces for social change, democracy, and peace”3

Today, these complex connections between sport and politics are in the spotlight once again as preparations for the 2026 World Cup, due to be hosted in the United States, are beset by visa problems, trade wars and other geo-political crises, and nations, players and fans consider the role football plays on the world’s stage.4 Readers will find Watson’s text offers a fascinating insight into the 2014 World Cup, and the influential role this tournament played in Latin American politics.

Copim asked Watson to tell us a bit more about his book, and the research he’s been enabled to share so widely thanks to Opening the Future:

My book focuses on how football was deployed by the Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos during his presidency (2010-2018), with a specific focus on how it was used as part of his peace project with the FARC and his efforts to create a greater sense of national unity and positive national identity. As the first book in English focusing on Colombian football, it makes an important interdisciplinary contribution to research on football and national identity, football history and its interrelation with politics, culture and society, sport-focused political discourse, use of Twitter for sporting nationalism, sport legislation, and Sport for Development and Peace projects. Using a multi-method approach including interviews with politicians, football fan group leaders, sports ministry personnel and experts involved in developing laws and public policy, and with sport coaches using football in the FARC demobilisation and reintegration camps, as well as a thorough analysis of presidential speeches and tweets about football, this book appraises a critical period in Colombia when sporting success converged with a historic peace process.

We also asked Watson about his experience of publishing his research open access: how has this form of fee-free publication been beneficial for him, his institution and his readers?

My book was the first book published under the Opening the Future scheme and received good initial advertising as a consequence. There have been various benefits. Personally, as a first-time author, the Opening the Future scheme gave me the chance to be read a great deal more than might have been the case otherwise. As a result of not having to buy individual copies and be easily downloadable, the book has been included on a number of university reading lists across the globe (in the UK, the USA, Australia and in some South American countries, I believe) given the chance to download either the book or specific chapters. In this way, it has become a key text in discussing aspects of sporting nationalism and political use of football in South America and globally. I doubt this would have been the case if it was not open access. The international aspect of this is also fundamental. Readers in Latin America, for example, can access the book open access which they would not have been able to do if not for Opening the Future. I feel my readership has therefore increased, and my ‘presence’ in the field became much more evident as a consequence, both to academics and students. This presence as a recognised and published expert indirectly helps my institution as the opportunities I have had to do talks, podcasts, presentations etc can then be acknowledged and advertised by my university.

Given his experience publishing a monograph open access, would Watson recommend the the process to others and/or pursue it again himself?

I think books aimed at academic audiences need to be open access. The sharing and dissemination of research is essential for creating new networks of research, for education and for progressing the field. Unfortunately, buying individual academic books at the prices we see is prohibitive for scholars.

At Copim, we’re very grateful to Peter Watson for taking the time to share his experiences with us. If you want to find out more about the other works published OA by Liverpool University Press thanks to Opening the Future’s subscribing libraries you’ll find a full list on our website. And, if you’re an OA author interested in sharing your experiences, please do get in touch.

The Opening the Future model was developed under the Copim project, funded by Arcadia & the Research England Development Fund.