NEWS

KU Launches Pledging Period for KU Select 2016

Knowledge Unlatched (KU), the global initiative for Open Access monographs, today launches its next front list and backlist collections: KU Select 2016.

KU Select 2016 offers 343 titles to libraries (147 front list to be published between November 2016 - April 2017 and 196 backlist published between 2005 - 2015) with 16 subject areas in the Humanities and Social Sciences.

54 well-respected scholarly publishers from 5 continents are participating including university presses, commercial publishers and Open Access publishers. KU Select 2016 was curated from a list of 681 titles chosen by the KU Title Selection Committee consisting of 40 librarians in 12 countries. Unlatched books will be available on Creative Commons licences as fully downloadable PDFs with hosting and preservation by OAPEN and HathiTrust, also preserved by CLOCKSS and Portico.

“Knowledge Unlatched has grown into an initiative that can help to make a larger collection of content available in Open Access. Researchers will discover high quality titles and they will find one of the largest Open Access collections available,” said Dr Sven Fund, Managing Director of Knowledge Unlatched.

“I’m delighted to see such confidence in KU. It is truly scaling up now,” said Dr Frances Pinter, Founder of Knowledge Unlatched. Institutional usage statistics for books unlatched from KU Select 2016 will be provided to libraries from 2017.

Libraries can now view the collection and pledge for titles at:

http://app.knowledgeunlatched.org