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By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
Fund: ‘Relevant and Timely Open-Access Collections’
The Berlin-based Knowledge Unlatched, a Wiley company, today (February 16) has announced that its annual pledging drive in 2022 has produced support pledged by hundreds of libraries in many parts of the world for open-access book and journal collections that Knowledge Unlatched and its partners offer.
In 2022, 77 publishers made pledges to unlatch new content, including 28 university presses. Among those were the University of Michigan Press; Routledge/Taylor & Francis; Central European University Press; Berghahn Books; University of California Press; International Water Association Publishing; Pluto Press; EDP Sciences; Transcript; and WBV Media.
Led by Wiley senior director Sven Fund, Knowledge Unlatched says that some 283 books will be made available, open-access, in 2023.
These include 184 books from the Knowledge Unlatched Select 2023 HSS Books Collection, as well as from two Focus Collections—one on climate change and another on global health—and around 99 books from Knowledge Unlatched’s partner collections.
In addition, Knowledge Unlatched expects to support the publication of 700 peer-reviewed blog posts and 10 videos.
The company’s efforts, per its media messaging, have also contributed to the sustainability of 52 journals with the help of four “subscribe-to-open” partnerships and an additional four journals from the final year of the Knowledge Unlatched Select journals collection.
What’s more, more than 200 additional books were made open access last year through Knowledge Unlatched “Open Services”—a service that allows publishers to make titles open-access on a title-by-title basis.
Knowledge Unlatched says it expects similar numbers in 2023, bringing the combined number of books expected to be published open access through its channels in 2023 to nearly 500.
Sven Fund
In a prepared statement, Fund is quoted, saying, “Despite many libraries facing another challenging budget year, we’re pleased to be able to unlatch a significant number of books and journals
“We’re also pleased to continue partnering with a wide range of reputable publishers, helping us build relevant and timely open-access collections each year.”
To date, the company reports, as many as 670 institutions in various parts of the world have supported Knowledge Unlatched initiatives.
By the end of 2023, the company expects to its lifetime impact to be “around 4,000 books and about 6o journals” published in open access.
Knowledge Unlatched provides title lists for each collection and updates its “unlatching” and “upcoming titles” dashboards regularly so that librarians can track such progress. Those dashboards are accessed here, with an “Oable” account.
More from Publishing Perspectives on academic and scholarly publishing is here, more from us on Knowledge Unlatched is here, and more from us on open access is here.