(21 January 2015) Cultural Science Journal has published a full report on the KU Pilot project (Vol. 7, No. 2, 2014, ISSN 1836-0416).
“Knowledge Unlatched: A Global Library Consortium Model for Funding Open Access Scholarly Books. Full Report on the Proof-of-Concept Pilot 2014” provides information about the Knowledge Unlatched proof-of-concept Pilot, which took place between January 2012 and September 2014.
The report comprehensively reviews the KU Proof-of-Concept Pilot Collection, providing detailed analysis of how the Pilot was designed and funded, the process of engaging publishers and libraries in the Pilot, library participation, as well as data on use of the Pilot Collection during its first six months online.
The Pilot involved libraries, publishers, authors, readers and research funders in the process of developing and testing a global library consortium model for supporting Open Access books.
297 libraries from 24 countries shared the cost of ‘unlatching’ 28 newly published Humanities and Social Sciences research titles, provided by 13 well-known scholarly publishers. After 24 weeks of the Collection being online, the number of downloads was recorded at 12,763 from 138 countries.
The success of the Pilot demonstrates demand from stakeholders across the monograph ecosystem for creative new approaches to supporting Open Access for books.
Frances Pinter, Executive Director, said, “We’re delighted to be able to share this in-depth review of our Pilot which has shed light on so many fascinating insights into how Open Access for monographs might be achieved. We are very pleased to have this report published by the Open Access journal Cultural Science. The report comes at a time when the potential for monographs to be both sustainably published and more widely available has been acknowledged. We continue to work with a growing number of interested parties and look forward to more OA developments in the future.”
The announcement is here.
