Knowledge Unlatched given Scottish Funding Council backing

 

Knowledge Unlatched (KU), the champion of open access for scholarly books, has secured Scottish Funding Council backing to help universities make their knowledge more easily available to the outside world.

 

Read PDF version

 

The Funding Council’s money will halve the costs of university libraries participating in a world-wide pilot scheme currently being set up KU.

 

Paul Hagan, Director of Research and Innovation at the Scottish Funding Council, said:

 

“Scotland’s universities have an enviable reputation for the quality of both their teaching and their research. I’m proud that we’re able to invest a project that will extend the benefits of this beyond university campuses and into the lives of more people.”

 

Frances Pinter, Executive Director of KU, added:

 

“I’m delighted with the support of the Scottish Funding Council. By working together we can find new ways of making university library budgets going further and providing wider access to content.”

The Funding Council’s support is available to all universities in Scotland encouraging them to be amongst the first 200 university libraries in the world whose participation in Knowledge Unlatched will start to unlock a wealth of academic publishing to new audiences.

Notes to editors:

1. Information on how universities in Scotland can become involved in the KU pilot is available at: http://www.jisccollections.ac.uk/Catalogue/Agreements/OneOffAgreements/1704

2. The deadline for signing up is 28 February 2014.

3. The Scottish Funding Council SFC’s funding contributes towards the costs of learning and teaching, skills development, research, innovation and other costs such as staff, buildings and equipment in Scotland’s 19 universities and 26 colleges.

4. Jisc Collections supports the procurement of digital content for education and research in the UK. Jisc Collections is managing the pledging process of the KU Pilot for UK participants.

5. Knowledge Unlatched is committed to changing the current business model for publishing to one with libraries sharing the costs of scholarly books.

6. Knowledge Unlatched believes that by working together libraries and publishers can create a sustainable route to Open Access for scholarly books and secure long-term cost savings for their own institutions by sharing the costs of making HSS monographs available on a Creative Commons licence.

„Lorem modi tempora incidunt ut labore et dolore magnam moditeora incidunt ut labore et dolore magnam.”