
This is a list of open access books curated by Matt DeCarlo and Anne Marie Gruber in October 2021. This collection is geared towards social work education in the United States. The vast majority of these books are published by commercial publishers, and the authors pay extra to share their work openly.
We provide the copyright license for these books, as many of them carry a restrictive No-Derivatives license, which allows you to download and redistribute the book for free…but does not allow you make public the derivative resources professors use to teach (like slideshows, video lectures, translations, excerpts, remixed and revised editions of the book, etc.) publicly available (though it is fine to put these resources in a Learning Management System or other private platform).
For additional resources, consult our list of open textbooks for social work provides a list of textbooks with more open licenses from which faculty can engage in transformative use.
Child welfare
Adoption from Care: International Perspectives on Children’s Rights, Family Preservation and State Intervention

Policy Press
CC-BY-NC-ND
Selling Transracial Adoption
Families, Markets, and the Color Line

Temple University Press
CC-BY-NC-ND
The Children of Looked After Children
Outcomes, Experiences and Ensuring Meaningful Support to Young Parents In and Leaving Care

Policy Press
CC-BY-NC-ND
Disability
Digital Youth with Disabilities

MIT Press
“This content is available without a subscription. It may not be altered in any way and proper attribution is required.”
Ethics
Gerontology
Human Behavior in the Social Environment
Framing Social Interaction: Continuities and Cracks in Goffman’s Frame Analysis

Routledge
CC-BY-NC-ND
Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Puberty and Adolescence The Inner Worlds of Teenagers and their Parents

Policy Press
CC-BY
Sexual Consent

MIT Press
“This content is available without a subscription. It may not be altered in any way and proper attribution is required.”
Social Thinking and History: A Sociocultural Psychological Perspective on Representations of the Past

Routledge
CC-BY-NC-ND
The Psychology of Learning: An Introduction from a Functional-Cognitive Perspective

MIT Press
“This content is available without a subscription. It may not be altered in any way and proper attribution is required.”
International Social Work
Global Social Work: Cutting Edge Issues and Critical Reflections

InTechOpen
No copyright license specified
Mental Health and Social Withdrawal in Contemporary Japan: Beyond the Hikikomori Spectrum

Routledge
CC-BY-NC-ND
Social Work in Africa: Exploring Culturally Relevant Education and Practice in Ghana

University of Calgary Press
CC-BY-NC-ND
Introduction to Social Work
Management
A Handbook of Management Theories and Models for Office Environments and Services

Routledge
CC-BY-NC-ND
Hidden Attractions of Administration: The Peculiar Appeal of Meetings and Documents

Routledge
CC-BY-NC-ND
Innovating Healthcare: The Role of Political, Managerial and Clinical Leadership

Routledge
CC-BY-NC-ND
Policy
Debtfare States and the Poverty Industry: Money, discipline and the surplus population

Routledge
CC-BY-NC-ND
Adoption from Care: International Effective Advocacy: Lessons from East Asia’s Environmentalists

MIT Press
“This content is available without a subscription. It may not be altered in any way and proper attribution is required.”
Feeding the Other: Whiteness, Privilege, and Neoliberal Stigma in Food Pantries

MIT Press
“This content is available without a subscription. It may not be altered in any way and proper attribution is required.”
Gender Equality and Work–Life Balance: Glass Handcuffs and Working Men in the U.S.

Routledge
CC-BY-NC-ND
Inclusive Consumption: Immigrants’ Access to and Use of Public and Private Goods and Services

Scandinavian University Press (Universitetsforlaget)
CC-BY
Progress and Confusion: The State of Macroeconomic Policy

MIT Press
“This content is available without a subscription. It may not be altered in any way and proper attribution is required.”
The Nordic Economic, Social and Political Model: Challenges in the 21st Century

Routledge
CC-BY-NC-ND
What Have We Learned? Macroeconomic Policy after the Crisis

MIT Press
“This content is available without a subscription. It may not be altered in any way and proper attribution is required.”
Transformational Moments in Social Welfare: What Role for Voluntary Action?

Bristol University Press
CC-BY-NC
Practice
Defining Mental Disorder: Jerome Wakefield and His Critics

MIT Press
“This content is available without a subscription. It may not be altered in any way and proper attribution is required.”
Schizophrenia: Evolution and Synthesis

MIT Press
“This content is available without a subscription. It may not be altered in any way and proper attribution is required.”
Research
Civic Media Literacies: Re-Imagining Human Connection in an Age of Digital Abundance

Routledge
CC-BY-NC-ND
The Politics and Ethics of Representation in Qualitative Research Addressing Moments of Discomfort

Routledge
CC-BY-NC-ND
Social Justice
Sustainability
Flint Fights Back: Environmental Justice and Democracy in the Flint Water Crisis

MIT Press
“This content is available without a subscription. It may not be altered in any way and proper attribution is required.”
Transformative Pathways to Sustainability: Learning Across Disciplines, Cultures and Contexts

Taylor & Francis
CC-BY-NC-ND