Re: [IP-OA_Forum] Knowledge Unlatched - Beteiligung für Bibliotheken noch bis zum 28. Februar möglich

[Christina Emery <christina@knowledgeunlatched.org>]

Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren,

ich bin Projektkoordinatorin bei Knowledge Unlatched und wir haben die oben genannte Diskussion ueber Google gefunden. Wir moechten sehr gerne Ihre Fragen, naemlich die vom 15. Januar, beantworten, welche wir unten auf Englisch zusammengefasst haben. Das Archiv der Diskussion finden Sie hier: https://lists.fu-berlin.de/pipermail/ipoa-forum/2014-January/thread.html

1. Is KU sure that authors will not pay additional printing costs to the publishers?

 

It remains up to authors to choose a publisher, and to agree the terms of a publishing contract with them.  

 

The Title Fee payment made to publishers does not include the costs of printing and physical distribution and all of the books being offered in the proof of concept Pilot Collection will be made available on a Creative Commons Non-Commercial license if they are unlatched. This means that publishers are free to decide how to make the most of the rights to commercial distribution, if they have been assigned to the publisher by the author. 

 

However, Knowledge Unlatched will be working closely with a Collections Committee, made up of Knowledge Unlatched member libraries, in order to set guidelines for the types of books that will be accepted into the Knowledge Unlatched program in the future. It will ultimately be up to the community of libraries that make up Knowledge Unlatched to create guidelines that they feel comfortable with.

 

2. Why are the books placed in the normal case under CC -NC -ND ?

The decision about the specific Creative Commons license applied to each of the books in the Pilot Collection was made by authors, in discussion with their editors. Some of the books in the Pilot Collection are being offered on a CC-BY-NC license. Other authors felt more comfortable with a CC-BY-NC-ND license.

The Pilot Collection is a proof of concept exercise for Knowledge Unlatched. If we are able to demonstrate that libraries from all over the world are able to work together to support high quality, open access books then it will be possible to refine the model in the next rounds. However we also support the right of authors to choose an OA license that they feel comfortable with and recognise that publishers might apply a higher Title Fee to CC-BY licensed books.

3. On the KU website it states in the section on licenses "Knowledge Unlatched books will generally be made ​​available under a Creative Commons, Non-Commercial Licence. This type of open access license allows people to share your book, but does not allow them to use the Open Access version to make money or to alter the work without the copyright owner's permission." This raises the question of who the copyright holder is? The publisher or the author? In the first case, the author is actually just as disenfranchised as a total buyout.

Knowledge Unlatched is not working directly with authors at this stage. Rather, Knowledge Unlatched is focussed on creating a sustainable route to OA for high quality, professionally published scholarly books. It is common for authors to assign the rights to commercial exploitation to a publisher. However, contracts between authors and publishers vary - and KU is hoping to work with a wide range of academic publishers, including new presses and 'pure OA' publishers as we scale the project up.

Our goal is not to reinforce existing inequalities, but to ensure that money being spent by libraries to support scholarly monographs secures the widest possible access. We are looking forward to refining and improving the KU model once the proof of concept pilot is complete and we are excited by the willingness of large and small libraries from all over the world to come with us on this journey.

I'd like to also point you towards the title fee breakdown for each book in the Pilot Collection which can be found in Appendix A (page 9) of the Pilot Prospectus: http://www.knowledgeunlatched.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/KU-Pilot-Prospectus.pdf

A list of libraries that have pledged their support for the Pilot so far can be found here: http://collections.knowledgeunlatched.org/signup-list/

It includes libraries large, research intensive institutions, as well as high school, community college and even agricultural college libraries from 12 countries. And we still have a little time before the end of the pledging period on the 28th of February 2014.

If anyone is interested in finding out more, please consider joining our free webinar on Knowledge Unlatched here: http://bit.ly/1eQrekf

We'd be happy to answer any further questions that you may have.

Best regards und mit freundlichen Gruessen,
Christina Emery

-- 
Christina Emery

Project Coordinator
Knowledge Unlatched

christina@knowledgeunlatched.org

21 Palmer Street, London, SW1H 0AD
www.knowledgeunlatched.org