Today Knowledge Unlatched (KU), the global initiative for open access books and journals, launches its new frontlist, backlist, and journals collection – KU Select 2017.
KU Select 2017 offers 364 titles in 17 subject areas in the humanities and social sciences. These include 151 frontlist titles planned for publication between November 2017 and April 2018 as well as 192 backlist titles published between 2006 and 2016, plus 21 journals.
60 well-respected scholarly publishers from five continents are participating, including commercial and open-access publishers as well as university presses.
KU Select 2017 was curated from a list of 941 titles chosen by the KU Title Selection Committee, which consists of 40 librarians from 12 countries. KU would like to thank the Title Selection Committee for their effort and rigorous focus. Thanks to them, the collection has become a uniquely valuable asset for libraries around the world.
Unlatched content will be available on Creative Commons licences as fully downloadable PDFs, with hosting and preservation supported by OAPEN and HathiTrust and additional preservation offered by CLOCKSS and Portico. Moreover, the content will be accessible on the dynamic BiblioLab platform. The journals will be available in open access versions for three years and indexed by the DOAJ.
“We’re proud to be taking KU to the next level. By including journals in this round for the first time, we are moving KU into another domain, thus making the initiative a truly open access movement across the whole range of content,” says Sven Fund, Managing Director of Knowledge Unlatched. “Furthermore, with the shared knowledge we gained through data analysis of our previous rounds, KU offers a risk-free open access model paired with a steep learning curve for all stakeholders.”
Libraries are now invited to view the collection and pledge for titles at: app.knowledgeunlatched.org. Interested librarians and stakeholders can find answers on the KU Select 2017 central information page.
