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Knowledge Unlatched has secured the involvement of nearly 300 libraries in order to make its pilot collection of books open access.
The Knowledge Unlatched scheme, which aims to create a sustainable system of open access for humanities and social science books, is using 28 titles from 13 scholarly publishers in its initial release, with participating libraries coming from 24 different countries to share the costs.
Frances Pinter, executive director of Knowledge Unlatched, said: "Through successfully reaching the target set for the Pilot, we have established proof of concept that libraries and publishers can work together to fund the publication of high quality specialist scholarly books and make them Open Access. This ensures that in the digital world we are not just replicating the old print model, but that we can indeed do better and contribute to breaking down what is fast becoming a new digital divide."
To run the pilot, Knowledge Unlatched needed 200 libraries to become involved. Ultimately, 137 from North America, 77 from the UK, 27 from Australia and New Zealand and 55 from the rest of the world signed up to take part.
Pinter said: "Because the target number of 200 participating libraries was exceeded, the amount that each library is paying per title was reduced from the target average price of $60.00 to under $43.00."
Pinter was also recently appointed c.e.o. of Manchester University Press.