The OA2020-DE and Knowledge Unlatched are committed to the quality of Open Access books

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The OA2020-DE and Knowledge Unlatched are committed to the quality of Open Access books


Berlin/Bielefeld, 06. August, 2018 The National Contact Point Open Access and Knowledge Unlatched (KU) have de-veloped quality criteria for Open Access books. The aim of the agreement is to pro-vide libraries and publishers with investment security in the future when financing OA books. Criteria have already been established as part of the cooperation, and KU will now be promoting the broad support of publishers worldwide. Participation is open to any publisher that meets the criteria.

"Quality standards in science and research are important," says Alexandra Job-mann, project collaborator at OA2020-DE. "Our common goal is to provide authors, publishers and libraries with practical guidelines that describe the criteria for the production, distribution and financial participation in the Open Access production of books.

"We know from our own experience that publishers care about the quality of Open Access," says Philipp Hess, Manager for Publisher Relations at KU. "With the agreement on criteria and the two-stage implementation plan, we were able to de-fine standards together with libraries that facilitate collaboration and help everyone involved to concentrate on barrier-free access to quality content.

In order to facilitate the establishment of standards, especially for smaller publish-ers, the recommendations are to be implemented in two phases. In the introductory phase to Open Access publishing of books, the main focus is on quality standards in the areas of formats, metadata, accessibility, licenses, costs and distribution. Phase two extends these standards and supplements them with criteria for quality control (peer review) and text and data mining.

The entire document can be viewed here, the self-commitment can be made by publishers to oaquality@knowledgeunlatched.org informally.

About the National Open Access Contact Point OA2020-DE: OA2020-DE is part of the established OA2020 community, works within the working groups of the Priority Initiative Digital Information of Allianz and cooperates with German universities, non-university research institutions and publishers. The project works closely with Project Deal and will seek exchange with all relevant projects, such as INTACT. The project is funded by the DFG for three years.

About Knowledge Unlatched (KU): Knowledge Unlatched (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:

Philipp Hess

philipp@knowledgeunlatched.org