Berlin, February 8^th, 2022: Knowledge Unlatched (KU), the central platform for Open Access (OA) financing models recently acquired by Wiley, is pleased to announce the results of the 2021 pledging round, which ended in December 2021 and saw hundreds of libraries worldwide support KU’s initiatives, including 34 institutions pledging for the first time and several new publishing partners joining the KU community.

Overall, about 390 books will be published OA in 2021. These include 227 books from the KU Select 2022 HSS Books Collection and 160 books from KU’s partner collections. The Climate Change collection was particularly successful, attracting more pledges than needed and allowing KU to unlatch 25 books from that collection, five more than originally planned. In addition, KU contributed to the sustainability of 51 journals thanks to its Subscribe-to-Open (S2O) partnerships.

“Despite many libraries facing another challenging budget environment in 2021, we are happy to once again be able to unlatch a significant number of books thanks to the widespread library support,” says Catherine Anderson, KU’s Head of Sales. “We are excited to be working with our colleagues at Wiley going into the new year and remain committed to our goal of making quality OA content available to users around the world.”

The list of KU’s publishing partners continues to grow and diversify. Last year’s partner collections included Amsterdam University Press Communication & Media Studies, Central European University Press, University of Michigan Press International Politics, Verfassungsblog, University of California Press Luminos, Berghahn Migration & Development Studies, Pluto Press Radical Politics, Routledge African Studies and Gender Studies, HAU Books, IWA Publishing, and two German-language collections: transcript Open Library Politikwissenschaft and wbv Open Library. 2021 also saw two KU partner initiatives from 2018 renewed for three more years: Open Commons of Phenomenology and OAPEN Library Membership Program.

KU is currently in discussions with its partners regarding new collections for 2022 and plans to share these from May 2022 onwards. In an ongoing effort to remain transparent about its pledging outcomes, KU also plans to make its financial results for 2021 public in the spring of 2022.

Over 670 institutions worldwide have supported KU initiatives to date. By the end of this year, KU’s total impact will number around 3,500 unlatched books — a significant jump from last year’s 2,700 — and over 60 journals flipped to OA.

About Knowledge Unlatched

Knowledge Unlatched (www.knowledgeunlatched.org) offers free access to scholarly content for readers and researchers around the world. Its crowdfunding Open Access models and initiatives provide libraries worldwide with a central place to support the publishing of Open Access content from leading publishers in a wide range of HSS and STEM disciplines.

Contact

Philipp Hess, philipp@knowledgeunlatched.org