De Gruyter Makes 100 Titles Available For Open Access via Unglue.it Crowdfunding Platform

Some major news from Unglue.it and GlueJar today.
A large scholarly publisher that’s been around for more than 260 years, De Gruyter, is making 100 titles available for open access from their e-edition series via the Unglue.it crowdfunding platform.

The Books/The License

100 De Gruyter English and German language titles, across multiple disciplines, published between 1958 to 2003 that currently can no longer be ordered will be made available for free to both individuals and libraries using a CC BY-NC-ND license. 

Titles Will Become Open Source If…

Each book will need to receive a minimum of $2100 (per title) of  funding from the Unglue.it community to become “unglued”. 

Review the De Gruyter Titles, Make Pledge(s)

A list of all 100 titles is available here.

“The demand for open-access books at De Gruyter has been increasing continuously,” said De Gruyter CEO Sven Fund. “This has motivated us to offer select e-dition titles at Unglue.it and see if users are willing to help increase the number of open access works available.”

Quick Comment

This is going to be an interesting Unglue.it campaign to watch.
Will this campaign be a catalyst for other publishers to participate and make some titles open source? 
A big kudos and congrats to Eric Hellman and the Unglue.it/GlueJar team for making this happen. We look forward to learn about how this campaign became a reality.
A big kudos also to De Gruyter for being willing participate in this campaign/experiment.
Learn More About Unglue.it.
See Also: (Video) Eric Hellman on  “Building a Public Sector for eBooks”
Keynote presentation at 2012 LITA National Forum

Filed under: Companies (Publishers/Vendors), Libraries, News, Open Access, Patrons and Users, Publishing