Crowdfunding
Open Access
Open Access to academic content (free of mandatory subscriptions or pay-walled access) speeds up the progress of research in many scientific disciplines, while also increasing the impact of researchers‘ work worldwide.
Model
Knowledge Unlatched (KU) is an initiative that has been working since 2012 in partnership with Libraries and Institutions around the world to expand and enrich the number of Open Access publications and initiatives. Our ground-breaking crowdfunding model offers libraries, consortia and funding initiatives the chance to get involved in a simple, transparent model without great cost or complexity.
Library Participation
Librarians play a fundamental role in this model:
- The KU Selection Committee consists of librarians from all over the world who make the selection of books to be included in our KU Select Books model, ensuring the most relevant content for users worldwide is included.
- Libraries share the cost of funding Open Access content ensuring a truly collaborative approach.
- The costs of investing in KU collections is less than the cost if all institutions were to purchase the content in traditional forms.
Stakeholders
KU is ideally positioned to play the central role among stakeholders by coordinating this cost-sharing dynamic among a growing group of librarians worldwide, who collectively have already enabled over 3,700 books to become open access, resulting in more than 15 million interactions to date.
In principle, it is simple
But your participation is very important
Without having to spend more of your budget