Knowledge Unlatched sees more than 20% growth for KU Select 2017
Knowledge Unlatched sees more than 20% growth for KU Select 2017
Berlin, 5th January 2018. Knowledge Unlatched, the central Open Access (OA) platform, has once again demonstrated the success of its OA programmes in the Humanities and Social Sciences with KU Select 2017 growing more than 20% on the previous year.
KU is to make 300 HSS books and 15 OA journals freely available to readers around the world. In addition, its partnership with the linguistics initiative Language Science Press makes a further 90 titles OA. In total, Knowledge Unlatched has supported the unlatching of more than 1200 monographs in HSS since 2012, representing more than 10% of all titles registered in the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB). From January onwards, KU will ensure an end to Article Processing Charges (APCs) for the 15 journals in their collection. Both books and journals now cost the library community less than closed equivalents. KU also provides enriched MARC records to aid the seamless discoverability of these titles.
“We are grateful for the strong support from academic libraries around the world,” says KU Managing Director Dr Sven Fund. “While we achieved strong overall growth, funding for some books and journals fell short of original expectations. We would, therefore, like to thank the publishers whose commitment to Open Access allowed us to unlatch the majority of the titles offered to libraries. Only broader participation from libraries will help with the unlatching of more HSS books and journals in the future.”
“KU would like to thank every member of the library community who has pledged their support this year. In response to demand from libraries, KU has a number of projects lined up for 2018, including partnerships with Luminos (University of California Press), HAU Books, OAPEN, and The Open Commons of Phenomenology, alongside the launch of a French language collection with OpenEdition and KU Select Science and Technology (STEM) 2018.
About Knowledge Unlatched (KU): KU offers free access to scholarly content for every reader across the world. Our online platform provides libraries worldwide with a central place to support Open Access models from leading publishing houses and new OA initiatives.
Contact:
Knowledge Unlatched:
Hannah Schroder, Publicity & Communications
