Punctum Books, stylized as punctum books, is an open-access and print-on-demand independent, scholar-led publisher based in Santa Barbara, California, United States.

The imprint was co-founded in 2011 by Eileen A. Joy (a medievalist and advocate of open access[1]) and Nicola Masciandaro (Brooklyn College, CUNY), who left the project in 2012.

The imprint was conceived partly as an offshoot of the BABEL Working Group,[2] a "non-hierarchical scholarly collective"[3] with an emphasis on medieval studies.

Since its inception, Punctum Books has sought to bring scholarly works, often with a transdisciplinary or unconventional nature, to a broader public.

[13] Punctum Books was a partner on the Community-led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM) project which ran from 2019-2023,[14] and is now a partner on the Open Book Futures project funded by the Arcadia Fund and Research England.