Knowledge Unlatched Announces the Results of 2021 Pledging, Plans to Make Open Access Hundreds of New Books and Journals in 2022

From a Knowledge Unlatched Announcement

Knowledge Unlatched (KU), recently acquired by Wiley, is pleased to announce the results of the 2021 pledging round, which ended in December 2021 and saw hundreds of libraries worldwide support KU’s initiatives, including 34 institutions pledging for the first time and several new publishing partners joining the KU community.

Overall, about 390 books will be published OA in 2021. These include 227 books from the KU Select 2022 HSS Books Collection and 160 books from KU’s partner collections. The Climate Change collection was particularly successful, attracting more pledges than needed and allowing KU to unlatch 25 books from that collection, five more than originally planned. In addition, KU contributed to the sustainability of 51 journals thanks to its Subscribe-to-Open (S2O) partnerships.

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he list of KU’s publishing partners continues to grow and diversify. Last year’s partner collections included Amsterdam University Press Communication & Media Studies, Central European University Press, University of Michigan Press International Politics, Verfassungsblog, University of California Press Luminos, Berghahn Migration & Development Studies, Pluto Press Radical Politics, Routledge African Studies and Gender Studies, HAU Books, IWA Publishing, and two German-language collections: transcript Open Library Politikwissenschaft and wbv Open Library. 2021 also saw two KU partner initiatives from 2018 renewed for three more years: Open Commons of Phenomenology and OAPEN Library Membership Program.

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Over 670 institutions worldwide have supported KU initiatives to date. By the end of this year, KU’s total impact will number around 3,500 unlatched books — a significant jump from last year’s 2,700 — and over 60 journals flipped to OA.

Direct to Complete Announcement

Filed under: Libraries, News, Open Access, Publishing