Berlin/London, 23.02.17. Knowledge Unlatched is very happy to announce that we will be unlatching all 147 front list and 196 backlist e-books from the KU Select 2016 collection.

Read PDF version: English / German.

Around 270 libraries and consortia from 21 countries pledged towards the unlatching of this collection, which shows that there is great global support for Knowledge Unlatched’s mission in making Humanities and Social Sciences e-books Open Access. This brings the total to 449 e-books available as Open Access via KU, since 2014.

The Humanities and Social Sciences titles cover sixteen subject areas and can be downloaded for free as PDFs and EPUBs via our official hosts’ platforms, OAPEN and HathiTrust.

Managing Director Sven Fund said, “We are very pleased to see KU Select 2016 succeed, despite adverse external conditions. This success has been made possible by publishers and libraries cooperating closely to make Open Access work.”

KU would like to thank its partners: Casalini Libri, CLOCKSS, HathiTrust, Karger Libri, Jisc Collections, LYRASIS, OAPEN, Portico and Schweitzer Fachinformation.

KU has announced its plans for 2017, which include expanding to HSS journals in the next collection, KU Select 2017, and providing geolocational usage statistics to libraries. More than 60 publishers have submitted over 850 titles for the next collection, which the Library Selection Committee will vote on so that KU is able to offer the most attractive titles to the library community.

Libraries and publishers can register their interest in receiving information for the next collection at http://app.knowledgeunlatched.org/register.

Knowledge Unlatched is a collaborative Open Access initiative funding Open Access books and journals in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Founded by Frances Pinter in 2013, KU has so far unlatched around 450 titles, including front list and backlist titles from the latest collection KU Select 2016.