Knowledge Unlatched: A Global Library Consortium Model for Funding Open Access Scholarly Books

Networked digital technologies are transforming the processes and institutions of knowledge creation and dissemination globally: remaking relationships between agents (which can include individuals, organisations or enterprises); enabling new forms of collaboration; and demanding new conceptual tools, infrastructure and business models to support activities that are valued by communities. The Knowledge Unlatched proof-of-concept Pilot sits within a broader context of efforts by scholarly and publishing communities to create such tools and infrastructure, and to enable the new business models demanded by disruptive change. It builds on a powerful innovation in copyright: Creative Commons licences (Lessig 2004), and engages with important developments elsewhere in the scholarly and communications landscapes. These include Cultural Science (Hartley & Potts 2014), the emergence of new possibilities for mapping and understanding use and impact (Priem et al. 2010), business model innovation (Hargreaves 2011) and the growth of community norms capable of supporting ‘peaceful revolutions’ in copyright (Suzor 2015).

Monographs are book-length scholarly works on a single subject or theme, usually by a single author. Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) research communities all over the world value specialist scholarly books as a form of ßwriting that allows complex ideas to be developed and shared at length (OAPEN-UK 2014; Adema & Rutten 2010). In contrast to textbooks, which provide a broad overview of a field and are intended for a student audience, monographs present primary research and original scholarship, and their intended audience is generally other researchers. Having a book-length work published by a recognised scholarly press is understood as an important intellectual achievement (Adema & Ferwerda 2014). As such, the publication of a monograph serves as evidence of professional competence and is a requirement for tenure and promotion in many disciplines (Crow 2012) (Williams et al. 2009).

In spite of their importance as a textual form through which new knowledge in the Humanities and Social Sciences is developed, certified and communicated among research communities across the globe, very few readers beyond the walls of the university are able to access monographs. At a moment when new technologies should be lowering barriers to access, the vast majority of these books remain both closed and expensive. Books have been slower than journals to make a shift to digital formats (Adema 2010) and monographs are often available only in hardback. They are generally published in short print runs and their biggest market is university libraries in the United States and Western Europe, who pay between $50 and $250 per copy (Gasson 2004; Steele 2008). There is widespread consensus that sales of monographs are in decline; twenty years ago it was normal for monographs to sell several thousand copies and today, most will sell just a few hundred (Wasserman 1998; Bunz 2014; Williams et al. 2009)

OA has an important role to play in improving the discoverability, accessibility and value of monographs to readers both within and beyond universities. A growing body of evidence suggests that making it easier for readers to find and use books, regardless of whether they can afford to purchase their own copy or have access to a well-funded library, increases the likelihood that these books will impact on the world and serve as a resource for scholars, practitioners and policy-makers (OAPEN Consortium 2011; Snijder 2013a; Snijder 2013b). As the KU Pilot demonstrated, thoughtful approaches to supporting the publication of OA scholarly books also have the potential to encourage positive change for publishers who find themselves trapped in a negative cycle of increasing costs and declining sales.

Helpful discussions of economic, social and technological changes impacting on monograph publishers can be found in: Greco, A. N., & Wharton, R. M. (2008). Should university presses adopt an open access [electronic publishing] business model for all of their scholarly books? In L. Chan & S. Mornati (Eds.), ELPUB2008. Open Scholarship: Authority, Community, and Sustainability in the Age of Web 2.0 - Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Electronic Publishing held in Toronto, Canada 25-27 June 2008 (pp. 149–164).

Funding agencies are becoming more conscious of the potential for OA to maximise the impact of investments in research by ensuring that new knowledge is made available to all who might learn from, apply and build on it (Finch et al. 2013). The Registry of Open Access Mandatory Archiving Policies lists 90 funder mandates and a further 228 institutional mandates (ROARMAP 2014).

These mandates require researchers to make works available by self-archiving final, peer-reviewed drafts in a freely accessible institutional or disciplinary repository (“Green OA”) or by publishing them in an OA journal (“Gold OA”) or both. Funding agencies that have adopted OA mandates for grant recipients include the US’s National Institutes of Health, Research Councils UK, the National Fund for Scientific Research, the Wellcome Trust, and the European Research Council. To date, most OA mandates have focussed on peer-reviewed journal articles. Few research institutions or funding agencies currently require researchers to make book-length works available on an OA basis.

The Australian Research Council and Australian Health and Medical Research Council Open Access mandates are a noteworthy exception to this general trend.

Policy makers and research communities remain anxious about the impact that requiring OA for monographs might have on an already troubled area of scholarly publishing (Finch et al. 2013; Mandler 2014). There is widespread consensus that the revenue models developed by journal publishers to support ‘Gold OA’ are unlikely to work for books (Gasson 2004; Adema 2010). There is also concern that business models capable of supporting a large-scale shift to OA for books have not yet been identified, and recognition of the value of continued experimentation in this area (Finch et al. 2013). Researchers are justifiably worried about how OA requirements for book-length works might impact on their capacity to find, and afford, publication opportunities. Sustainable routes to OA for large numbers of scholarly books are needed.

A key aspect of the challenge of ensuring that monographs are not left behind in the shift to OA relates to the fixed costs associated with publishing book length works. It costs more to publish a 70-100,000 word scholarly book than it does to publish a 5 -10,000-word journal article (Willinsky 2009). In 2013 Palgrave Open announced a £11,000 (US$17,200) fee for the publication of OA monographs on a CC-BY licence, while Manchester University Press is charging £5,900 - £7,800 (US$9,230 - $12,200) for the publication of books on a CC-BY-NC licence (Anon 2014a). OA charges for books are simply too high to be affordable for individual authors. Furthermore, research budgets in the Humanities and Social Sciences are much smaller than in STEM disciplines, and many authors aren’t attached to a research budget at all.

In spite of these challenges, a rich landscape of OA monograph experiments has emerged over the last few years. Libraries and publishers are collaborating to explore models based on direct support for the costs of OA book publishing (Adema & Schmidt 2010). Publishers are providing researchers with OA monograph services (for a fee) and testing the extent to which free versions might expand markets for print and other proprietary formats (Adema 2010; Snijder et al. 2014). Shared digital infrastructure is supporting the shift to OA: providing hosting, preservation and discovery services for OA books. The OAPEN Digital Library and the Directory of Open Access Books are two important examples.

Monograph models currently being explored include:

The next section of this report introduces the KU model: explaining how the concept of a global library consortium approach to supporting OA for book-length works was developed and how the proof-of-concept Pilot was designed and funded.

KU was formally established as a London-based Community Interest Company, equivalent to a US 501c3, in August 2012 by publisher and social entrepreneur Frances Pinter. KU is the formalisation of the ‘Global Library Consortium’ model developed by Pinter over several years in response to her concern over the protracted crisis in monograph publishing, and a desire to help publishers to engage with opportunities presented by digital technologies and OA. Pinter first aired her vision for a Global Library Consortium approach to supporting OA monograph publishing at the Tools of Change Conference in New York in 2010 (Polanka 2010). In September 2011 Pinter embarked on a speaking tour of Australia. Her tour included a keynote presentation on academic publishing and the future of the monograph at Queensland University of Technology (Adamson 2011). While at QUT, Pinter met with Deputy Vice Chancellor for Technology, Library and Information Services, Professor Tom Cochrane. This trip played a key role in securing support for KU from three founding Australian libraries: Queensland University of Technology, The University of Melbourne and The University of Western Australia.

KU’s mission is to create a sustainable route to OA for book-length scholarly publications. It is also committed to developing the coordinating mechanisms that libraries and publishers need to ensure that OA occurs efficiently. In doing so, KU aims to help libraries to maximise the positive impact of the money that they are already spending on specialist scholarly books and to help secure the future of the monograph.

The KU start-up phase and proof-of-concept Pilot were supported through both direct and in-kind funding.

Between 2012 and 2014 KU received total direct funding of £321k. Direct funding for the Pilot was provided by: the Open Society Foundation; The British Library Trust; Queensland University of Technology; The University of Melbourne; and The University of Western Australia. Queensland University of Technology provided additional support by allowing Lucy Montgomery to work full time on the project, based in London.

Additional in-kind support for the Pilot was provided by: The New York Public Library; Harvard University Library; The Big Innovation Centre in London; Duke University Library, Kenyon College Library and Frances Pinter.

A complete list of the direct funders and the in-kind contributions is carried in Appendix 2.

Significant work was required to turn the broadly framed concept behind KU into a defined pilot offering that could be presented to publishers, authors and research funders, and marketed to libraries all over the world.

Goals of the KU Pilot design process included:

Between mid-2012 and early 2014 the KU team worked to refine and test the Pilot model and build interest among stakeholder communities. Between them, Frances Pinter and Lucy Montgomery presented the project at more than 40 conferences, workshops and meetings in the UK, Europe, Australia and the United States, soliciting feedback and refining the Pilot proposition as it was provided.

In addition to presenting on the KU project at events hosted by others, KU was also the focus of several important meetings. Workshops on KU played an especially important role in helping the team to gain insight into stakeholder perspectives on the project. The first was an event hosted by Robert Darnton at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University in January 2012 (Anon 2012). The workshop brought together publishers, librarians and funders around the theme of a sustainable funding model for OA books. Ivy League and other research-led university libraries, some of the major university presses, funders and OA thought-leaders were represented at the event. It provided an opportunity for Frances Pinter to present the concept of a global library consortium approach to sharing the costs of publishing OA monographs to a knowledgeable group of monograph stakeholders. Although there was scepticism from the group about whether such a model could work, there was also a consensus that a Pilot should be undertaken.

The second workshop was hosted by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University in June 2013. It involved senior representatives from libraries, scholarly presses, university administrators, research funders and members of the academy. This workshop allowed the KU team to share a preliminary model of the KU Pilot, gather specific feedback on pilot design and workflows, and to discuss the results of a survey of North American libraries on the KU model (Montgomery 2013). Questions that a KU research programme might usefully explore were also considered. A report on the workshop was made available via the KU website after the event.

See: http://www.knowledgeunlatched.org/2013/09/open-access-and-scholarly-books-workshop-report/

In June 2013 the Max Planck Society hosted a one-day workshop on KU at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Germany. The event involved leading university librarians from around Germany and was timed to coincide with a meeting of LIBER, Europe’s largest network of research libraries.

Throughout the developmental phase of the Pilot, the KU team drew on the expertise of the fifteen highly experienced library and publishing professionals who made up the KU Advisory Board. A full list of KU Advisory Board Members is available in Appendix 3.

Informed Strategies, an industry consultancy based in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, played an active role in shaping the development of the model: conducting interviews with vendors and libraries, providing feedback on how the KU workflow might need to be shaped in order to enable library buy-in and advising on the pre-Pilot survey (discussed in more detail below).

KU worked closely with the New York Public Library and Informed Strategies in order to survey North American research and liberal arts libraries, as well as those with an interest in OA and publishing. During the second quarter of 2013 a survey on the KU model was circulated to a list of 239 libraries identified as likely to be interested in OA initiatives. These included 116 libraries that already participate in OA initiatives and/or have an interest in library-based publishing. Of the 239 libraries invited to participate in the survey, 62 valid responses were received from 67 institutions. This represented a response rate of more than 25%. 92% of respondents were members of the American Research Library Association.

The survey was also made available to UK libraries via the Jisc Collections website and promoted through Listservs and via Twitter. Research Libraries UK (RLUK) emailed its 34 members, encouraging them to participate in the survey. 37 valid responses to the UK library survey were received.

The survey helped the project team to identify the kinds of books and the size of the collection that libraries were most likely to support during the Pilot. A preference for single titles and single subject packages was evident in responses from UK libraries, compared to institutions in North America.

What would you like KU to offer libraries?

The optimal size of the Pilot Collection (in value terms) was established with another question:

If KU is to offer a package, how many titles should there be?

How concerned are you about ‘free riders’?

Would you consider paying a membership fee to help with KU Costs?

Publishing on an OA licence is only one step along the way to facilitating access. Ensuring that content is discoverable and that it can be delivered in ways that suit the needs of libraries is key to maximising its accessibility and impact (Snijder 2014; Adema & Rutten 2010).

Because the technical workflows and the technological infrastructure of libraries vary, questions around platforms and discovery were also raised. These questions provided a point of reference for assessment of the KU Pilot’s performance later on.

Where is your first choice for the titles to be discoverable for users?

It is very important for the titles to be on the following platforms (top 6 responses)

Comments from Librarians

Libraries that took part in the pre-Pilot survey provided the following comments:

Publishers were also consulted extensively over a two-year period. This included meetings at the Frankfurt and London Book Fairs. Publishers were key members at the early workshop at Radcliffe College in 2012 (Anon 2012) and of the group that met to discuss the KU model at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University in 2013 (Montgomery 2013).

The project team made numerous visits to publishers’ offices and presented at the 2013 and 2014 American Association of University Presses annual meetings in Boston, Massachusetts.

Publishers willing to be involved in the proof-of-concept Pilot were asked to sign an Expression of Interest Form, and to allow their names to be publicised on the KU website. Establishing a publically available list of publishers willing to take part in the project played an important role in building the confidence of both library and publishing communities in the initiative.

Each publisher that signed up for the Pilot was also asked to complete a questionnaire. Publisher responses to this questionnaire provided important insight into the needs of the group and were used to help shape the Pilot design. The questionnaire sent to publishers is available in Appendix 6.

The questionnaire revealed that:

The publishers that chose to be involved in the Pilot were overwhelmingly positive about the model. The following are a selection of comments made by participating publishers that completed the questionnaire:

KU did not deal with authors directly during the Pilot. Rather, it engaged with publishers, as the representatives of authors within the formal scholarly communication landscape. However, the KU team were anxious to make sure that the model met the needs of authors: ensuring that they retained access to high quality publishing and knowledge certification services, while at the same time maximising their ability to connect with audiences that valued their work.

Publishers offered a range of books to KU for possible inclusion within the Pilot Collection. Once the books that were to be included in the Pilot Collection had been identified, publishers approached authors for permission, and to discuss the kind of Creative Commons licence that should be applied to each work.

When authors had agreed to the inclusion of their books within the KU Pilot Collection, publishers were asked to forward an author perspectives survey to them, so that the project team could gain insight into author views on the model. A copy of the author perspectives survey is available in Appendix 8. Responses to the author survey can be read in the ‘Featured Authors’ section on the KU website.

Overall, responses to the author perspectives survey suggested that authors perceived the KU initiative as combining the benefits of being published by recognised scholarly press with the opportunity to widen the reach of their work and increase its impact through OA.

The following comments are representative:

The Pilot provided the opportunity to test three key assumptions at the heart of the KU proposition:

The Pilot Collection included titles from the following 13 publishers:

The publishers that took part in the Pilot provided a cross section of the different kinds of scholarly presses involved in the monograph space: university presses; commercial presses; large and small publishers from North America, the United Kingdom and Continental Europe were all involved in the Pilot. All of the publishers involved operated according to traditional, closed publishing models.

Open Book Publishers, a ‘pure Open Access’ publisher, also wanted to participate in the proof-of-concept Pilot Collection. Open Book Publishers is a Social Enterprise and Community Interest Company (CIC). It publishes its books in hardback, paperback, PDF and e-book editions. It also makes an OA version of all of its titles available immediately upon publication, as a standard.

http://www.openbookpublishers.com/section/14/1/about

After earnest consideration it was decided that because the profile of Open Book Publishers differed significantly from that of the other publishers taking part in the Pilot, it was not appropriate to include their books within the limited scope of a proof-of-concept exercise. The KU team were concerned that doing so would make it harder to test the Pilot’s key propositions: in particular, that libraries from around the world would be willing to share the cost of securing OA for scholarly books. The group designing the Pilot model were also concerned that including Open Book Publishers in the Pilot might ultimately make it more difficult to identify and address challenges specific to pure OA publishers. Addressing the needs of pure OA publishers remains a priority for the next phases of the project.

During the second and third quarters of 2013, publishers were sent guidelines about the types of books that should be submitted for possible inclusion in the Pilot. These guidelines emphasised the need for rigorous peer review. They also encouraged publishers to submit titles that were likely to be relevant to an international audience.

Publishers then submitted a list of books that they would be willing to offer to libraries as part of a KU Pilot Collection.

The 13 participating publishers offered more than 100 front-list titles for possible inclusion in the proof-of-concept Pilot Collection. KU worked with collections librarians at the New York Public Library in order to curate these books into a single 28-book Collection that covered History, Literature, Political Science, and Media & Communications. One book in Anthropology was also accepted. The majority of the books were monographs and five were edited collections. Publishers and librarians anticipated that the core audience for the Collection was likely to be undergraduate and graduate level research students, as well as independent researchers.

Once the Pilot Collection had been selected, publishers were advised of the books that had been accepted into the programme. Once acceptance of a title into the KU programme had been confirmed, publishers discussed the KU initiative with authors and, in consultation with them, selected the Creative Commons licence that should be applied to each work.

Copyright for scholarly monographs generally resides with the author, who assigns specific rights to a publisher. As such, permission from authors to make books available under a Creative Commons licence was required. Publishers worked with their authors to explain the Creative Commons licensing options and to select the specific Creative Commons licence that should be applied to each work.

An explanation of Creative Commons Licence options is available at: https://creativecommons.org/choose/

‘Non-commercial’ Creative Commons licences were chosen by authors and publishers for twenty-five out of the twenty-eight books in the KU Pilot Collection. Non-commercial Creative Commons licenses reserve commercial rights in a copyright work. This means that a separate licence must be negotiated with the copyright owner for all commercially related uses of the work (Lessig 2004). By maintaining an exclusive right to the commercial exploitation of a book, publishers remained confident about their ability to generate additional income for themselves and their authors by publishing and distributing the book through commercial channels in other formats. This helped to keep the Title Fees for the books in the Pilot Collection lower than might have been the case if they had been offered on licences that included rights to commercial re-use.

Many of the authors who agreed to the inclusion of their books in the Pilot Collection indicated to their publishers that they were not comfortable with granting a blanket licence allowing others to alter or adapt their work. In order to protect the integrity of their work, some authors chose to select a Creative Commons licence that includes a ‘No-Derivatives’ condition. This licence restriction means that the authors expect down-stream users to seek permission before creating derivative works.

Licence Type of Pilot Collection Books

Publishers were asked to submit a Title Fee for each of the monographs included in the Pilot Collection. Publishers were required to calculate each Title Fee on a Cost Recovery basis. That is, the Title Fee needed to reflect the costs of bringing a monograph to first digital file. These were defined as: proposal review; internal manuscript review; editorial guidance to authors; external reader payments; copyediting; typesetting; proofing; design; permissions fees; marketing; and overheads. Costs associated with printing, binding and digital distribution were not included in the Title Fee. Book prices normally include a risk factor that addresses uncertainty regarding sales, which is not necessary with the KU approach.

Libraries were not charged for the operational costs associated with developing and coordinating the Pilot. Funding provided by the Founding Libraries, charitable foundations and supporters (identified in Appendix 2 of this report) supported the costs of coordinating the proof-of-concept Pilot. In future rounds, KU plans to add a levy to each Title Fee to cover the consortium’s operating costs. It is hoped that funding the operating costs of the consortium by applying a levy to each Title Fee will allow KU to operate sustainably, and at scale. It will also help to ensure that KU is able to move beyond grants and subsidies to cover its core costs.

The average Title Fee for books in the Pilot Collection was $12,000. This equated to a total cost of $336,000 to secure OA for all 28 books.

The cost to libraries of unlatching the Pilot Collection was calculated by dividing the total cost of all Title Fees by the number of participating institutions.

The project team decided in advance a minimum of 200 libraries would be required to pledge their support for the Pilot Collection in order to achieve proof of concept.

If 200 libraries shared the cost of unlatching the Collection, each library would pay a maximum of $1680. This equated to an average title fee of $60 per title.

If less than 200 libraries signed up for the Pilot, then the publishers would be advised that the Collection had not been unlatched.

The table below illustrates the per-library cost reduction associated with a higher number of libraries participating in the Pilot.

During the course of the Pilot development process, several consultants and commentators raised the issue of ‘free riding’, suggesting that the KU model’s failure to provide sufficient exclusive advantages to participating libraries would remove incentives to pay for content and render the KU model nonviable. These concerns reflect wider debates about economic justifications for copyright protection, as well as the capacity of creative industries firms to operate in the absence of excludable rights (Suzor 2015; Montgomery & Potts 2009; Hargreaves 2011). The pre-Pilot survey suggested that libraries were not overly concerned by the possibility of free riding: only 18% of libraries in the US and 6% of libraries in the UK indicated that they were ‘concerned’ about free riding. The remainder were either ‘not concerned’ or ‘somewhat concerned about the possibility of free riding (see p.15 of this report). The KU team recognised the importance of maintaining a high level of trust and building positive community feedback and transparency into the Pilot model.

With this in mind, once 150 libraries had agreed to participate, a list of participating institutions was made public on the KU website. A countdown mechanism was used to indicate how much time libraries had left to pledge. Even when the original target of 200 libraries had been achieved, a further 97 institutions signed up to the pilot. These institutions helped to lower the costs of unlatching the books, in spite of the fact that they could be certain that they would have free access to the OA version, because the unlatching target had already been achieved.

The willingness of research libraries to participate in the KU Pilot, and the value of securing the prestige associated with Charter Member status by doing so, is consistent with the wider willingness of this community to work together where there is demonstrable benefit for the greater good. A few well-known examples are arXiv

arXiv is an e-prints service providing access to scientific papers in the fields of mathematics, physics, astronomy, computer science, quantitative biology, statistics, and quantitative finance.

One of the most challenging aspects of the Pilot design process was identifying a mechanism that would ensure that library contributions to the costs of bringing books to first digital file were reflected in the cost of other formats. Libraries were concerned that the KU model might amount to a double payment from libraries to publishers: requiring libraries to pay for the cost of unlatching a book in addition to the full cost of a print or closed e-book version.

The caution of libraries in relation to double payment for OA content reflects the debate about ‘double dipping’ surrounding OA journals. See, for example: http://www.rluk.ac.uk/news/rluk-issues-guidance-nature-future-big-deals-double-dipping/

Finding a way to ensure that this did not occur was vital to building confidence in the KU model among libraries. It was especially important for libraries that subscribe to pre-purchase plans or large (closed) e-book collections. It is not always possible or practical for libraries to opt out of purchasing a single title, or a small number of titles, because they are being supported elsewhere: for example, through the KU Pilot Collection.

Publishers indicated early in the Pilot design process that they were willing to provide discounts on print or other format purchases to the libraries that helped to unlatch the Pilot Collection. However, finding a transparent, time-efficient mechanism for delivering these discounts in a complex, global distribution landscape in which discounts negotiated by library consortia, book-sellers, e-book vendors, digital platforms and other intermediaries play important roles was not easy.

For the Pilot, publishers agreed to waive the unlatching fee for books that a library indicated it was ordering through another channel. The unlatching fee was also waived for libraries that indicated that they intended to order a book within 30 days of the end of the pledging period through another supplier. This approach minimised disruption to established purchasing processes for libraries. However, it still required libraries to manually check to see whether additional formats of a title in the Pilot Collection were being ordered through other channels.

Each book in the Pilot Collection was allocated a ‘deduction value’ based on dividing the Title Fee by the minimum number of libraries needed to unlatch the Collection. For the Pilot this number was 200. (See table overleaf.)

The deduction value assigned to each book was used to adjust the invoice sent to libraries that reported that they had purchased an additional format of titles included in the Pilot Collection. Publishers were willing to accept self-reporting by libraries for this purpose.

Publishers participating in the Pilot also accepted the risk that libraries might try to ‘game’ the model: claiming so many additional format purchases that the unlatching fee payment would fail to cover the fixed costs of publishing a book. In spite of this risk, publishers tolerated this approach to recognising additional format purchases and engaged with the KU proof-of-concept Pilot as an opportunity to learn about how they could work with libraries in new ways.

Additional format purchases claimed by participating libraries:

A total of 702 additional format purchases were claimed by 113 (38%) of the libraries that helped to unlatch the Pilot Collection.

The number of additional format purchases claimed ranged from 0-28 titles per library.

Of libraries claiming an additional format purchase, the average number of additional format purchases identified was 6.

E-books accounted for 44% of the additional format purchases identified. Print books accounted for 56%.

50 libraries purchased an additional format of the most popular title. 10 libraries purchased an additional format of the least popular title.

Libraries identified an approval plan as the route of purchase for 138 books; e-book collections were identified as the route of purchase for 129; a firm order (electronic or print) was identified for 175. There was no indication given as to the route for 260 of the additional format purchases identified by libraries.

Title List – Pilot Collection

In December 2013 the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) announced its decision to make a grant of up to £550 available to universities in England that participated in the KU Pilot. This grant contribution was used to reduce the participation fee paid by university libraries in England by 50%.

David Sweeney, HEFCE’s Director for Research, Innovation and Skills, stated that the KU Pilot would offer insights and lessons important in testing the readiness of the scholarly book-publishing world to support the OA agenda (Anon n.d.). Jisc Collections administered the financial backing of up to £50,000 from HEFCE.

In February, just a few weeks before the close of the pledging period, the Department for Employment and Learning for Northern Ireland announced that it would also make funding available to libraries in Northern Ireland on the same basis (Anon n.d.).

The Scottish Funding Council also announced that it would provide matched funding for libraries in Scotland that joined the Pilot (Anon 2014b). Jisc Collections administered these grants.

Grants for UK Charter Members:

Participating institutions in the UK: 77

Eligible institutions in the UK: 70

50% of final participation fee £782.92 = £391.46

70 x £391.46 = £27,402.20 total grant money awarded.

On 5 October 2013 a press release was issued via the KU website announcing the KU Pilot Collection and inviting libraries to participate (Anon 2013). This press release was promoted via social media, email, and library Listservs and marked the beginning of the pledging period. A full Pilot Prospectus was made available to libraries via the KU website and is presented in Appendix 9, page 58.

The Pilot Prospectus is available at: http://www.knowledgeunlatched.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/KU-Pilot-Prospectus.pdf

A limited budget and a very small team made it necessary to focus marketing efforts for the Pilot on North America, the United Kingdom, Australia and Germany.

More specific information about the marketing process adopted in different regions is provided below.

In August 2013 the non-profit membership organisation LYRASIS was appointed as KU’s North America marketing and invoicing partner. LYRASIS became responsible for marketing and invoicing for the Pilot Collection in the United States and Canada: handling communications with its members and the larger library community via its sales reps and Listservs. LYRASIS was supported by Informed Strategies, which provided strategic advice and focussed on engaging libraries that were not members of the LYRASIS network.

Jisc Collections provided valuable assistance: coordinating pledging by UK-based libraries; administering grant funding provided by HEFCE, DELNI and the SFC; invoicing libraries and handling the payment process.

Jisc Collections also helped to promote the KU Pilot Collection: communicating with libraries via its newsletter, emails, Listservs and Twitter feed.

Burgundy Services assisted in marketing the KU Pilot Collection via email and Listserv postings.

The KU project team also communicated directly with UK libraries about the Pilot Collection – via email, telephone conversations, webinars and library visits.

In September 2011 Frances Pinter visited Australia to discuss the ‘Global Library Consortium approach to funding OA for books’. An important result of this visit was early backing for the KU project from three founding Australian libraries: Queensland University of Technology, the University of Melbourne and the University of Western Australia.

Awareness of KU resulting from Australian library involvement in establishing the Pilot was built upon through:

The Max Planck Society hosted a one-day workshop on KU at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in June 2013. Leading university librarians from Germany were invited to discuss the potential of the KU model, and to consider how Germany might engage with it.

At the end of the meeting it was decided to take the idea forward to a meeting of consortia leaders. This was done by Hildegard Schäffler.

KU staff worked with Burgundy Services to market the Pilot Collection to libraries in remaining territories. This involved an email and telemarketing campaign, a webinar series, a short film, an animated infographic and a social media campaign.

During the course of the Pilot, Twitter followers grew to around 1,200 and reflected the widespread interest in KU.

Twitter Followers

Slideshare proved to be an especially valuable resource: allowing librarians and others interested in the project to view presentations on the KU project in their own time.

The KU team recorded a simple slideshow with a voiceover, providing information about the KU model, the goals of the Pilot, and how libraries could get involved.

By the end of November 2014 the presentation had been viewed more than 9,500 times.

Slideshare Views

The pledging window for the proof-of-concept Pilot lasted from 4 October 2013 until 28 February 2014. It was initially expected that the pledging window would close on January 31. However, in December 2013 the Higher Education Funding Council of England announced its decision to provide matched funding for libraries in England that signed up for the Pilot Collection (Anon n.d.). The late announcement of this decision, and the need to ensure that libraries in England were informed of the availability of matched funding, prompted the extension of the pledging window by an additional month.

Timelines of sign ups Pledging period 04 10 13 – 28 07 14

Timeline of sign ups split by region (non-cumulative)

297 libraries from 24 countries signed up for the Pilot Collection, exceeding the original target by almost 50%.

This reduced the cost for every library taking part from $1680 to $1195. Libraries paid an average of just under $43 per title. This was less than the average of $60 per book that would have been paid if the minimum of 200 libraries had joined the Pilot. It also compared favourably with an average hardback cover price of $95.

Geographical breakdown of sign ups

The geographic spread of the participating Pilot libraries was: 46% from North America, 26% from the UK and 28% from the rest of the world. 24 libraries from Australia took part in the Pilot: an impressive number, given that Australia has just 43 universities.

Diversity in the official languages of countries involved in the Pilot highlights the international reach of the project. English is an official language in just 29% of the countries represented in the KU Pilot. English is not an official language in 71% of the countries involved. 84% of Charter Member institutions are in a country where English is an official language, and 16% are not.

Language division of sign up by country

Official language of each Charter Member

National libraries in the following countries took part in the Pilot: Great Britain; Latvia; The Netherlands; Scotland and Wales. Four State Libraries also participated. These were: The State Library of Baden; The State Library of Bavaria; The State Library of Berlin and The State Library of Western Australia.

Type of participating institution

Size of participating institution by number of students

Non-university research organisations also took part:

Developing technical workflows and identifying content delivery and metadata bottlenecks, as well as strategies for overcoming these in order to scale the model, were important aspects of the Pilot. The results indicate that generally better metadata is required of publishers.

KU elected not to develop its own platform for hosting and delivery. Instead, it chose to make the most of existing infrastructure by partnering with established hosting and content delivery services. The OA version of each unlatched book is being hosted in the OAPEN Digital Library and by HathiTrust. Some publishers have also elected to host the OA version of each book on their platforms (see table below) and the possibility of hosting the OA version of books within the British Library’s Digital Library is being explored.

KU’s decision to work with partners to ensure that content is preserved, available and discoverable provided important advantages: allowing KU to build on existing investments in hosting and discovery services, and to benefit from the visibility and networks of its partners. The willingness of OAPEN and HathiTrust to work with KU to deliver the Pilot Collection significantly reduced the costs of developing and testing the KU model and helped minimise technical risks.

Loading the books onto the OAPEN and HathiTrust platforms began in early March, once the pledging period had closed. The OA versions of the first books became available on 11 March 2014 via OAPEN. Loading content onto HathiTrust took longer, but the first KU titles became available via HathiTrust on 15 May 2014.

Pilot Collection titles also available as OA on publishers’ own websites:

KU has agreements with CLOCKSS and Portico to ensure that the OA version of each book in the Pilot Collection is digitally preserved. The OAPEN Digital Library is also acting as a preservation platform.

OAPEN provided MARCXML records for the KU Pilot Collection. These were enhanced using data available through other systems and refined to ensure consistency and quality by teams at Duke University Library, Kenyon College Library, Denison Library and the Boston College Libraries.

For more information see: http://www.knowledgeunlatched.org/pilot-collection/marcxml-data/

Both versions are available for download, for free, on the KU Collections website.

These records were then sent to:

KU ensured that metadata provided to these services was complete and of a high quality. The opaque world of how web-based discovery tools integrate metadata into their services is an issue currently being addressed by a number of bodies, including the US’s National Information Standards Organisation (NISO). KU has contributed to NISO’s work in this area,

Frances Pinter, ‘Knowledge Unlatched – Navigating Through the Rapids of Change’, Using the Web as an E-Content Distribution Platform: Challenges and Opportunities, NISO two-day virtual conference, 21-22 October 2014. http://www.niso.org/news/events/2014/virtual/publishing_econtent/

The KU Pilot served as a mechanism for establishing a core group of member libraries with the right to help govern the organisation as it moves forward. The Library Steering Committee was appointed in the summer of 2014 (see Appendix 5 for a list of Library Steering Committee members).

Levying a small membership fee was considered during the scoping stages of the project, but not applied during the Pilot. Library consultation and surveys indicated that libraries would be willing to pay a small annual membership fee in the region of $500.

A membership fee will be applied in the next stages of the project. Charter libraries that took part in the KU proof-of-concept Pilot will be exempt from paying a membership fee until at least 2016. KU Founding Libraries are permanently exempt from paying a membership fee.

Founding Library status has been granted to institutions that have made a substantial contribution to the startup and running costs of KU, particularly during the proof-of-concept Pilot phase. Founding Libraries are entitled to a permanent position on the KU Library Steering Committee and will not be required to pay a membership fee.

KU Founding Libraries are:

Libraries that took part in the KU Pilot are Charter Members of KU and are exempt from paying a membership fee until 2016.

Libraries that join KU during its next phases will become regular members. They will be required to pay a membership fee, which will be set with advice from the Library Steering Committee.

KU is adopting a two-tier approach to library governance (Anon 2014c). A Library Steering Committee was established in 2014. A Collections Committee will be established in 2015.

Members of the nine-person Inaugural Library Steering Committee were invited to join, based on existing support for and engagement with KU. They will serve a two-year term (September 2014 – September 2016), after which new members will be nominated. See Appendix 5 for a list of the Inaugural Library Steering Committee members.

The Library Steering Committee is responsible for:

Members of the Library Steering Committee will be asked to assist with:

On 11 March 2014 the first of the KU Pilot Collection books became available via the OAPEN Digital Library. Books became available via HathiTrust several weeks later.

The books in the Pilot Collection were not uploaded onto OAPEN or HathiTrust in a single batch. Rather, each book was uploaded as it was provided to KU by the publisher. Some of the books in the Pilot Collection were not published until the second half of 2014. As a result, the final Pilot Collection title became available via OAPEN in September 2014.

In spite of this, OAPEN recorded 6,301 downloads of KU books in the first 12 weeks of the Pilot Collection’s availability online. Readers in at least 121 countries downloaded books from the Collection. After 24 weeks, the numbers had increased to 12,763 downloads from at least 138 countries.

OAPEN Digital Library usage data is COUNTER compliant. This means that raw download figures have been filtered according to a standard methodology, in order to ensure that an accurate number of downloads is reported, and that activity generated by online bots is excluded. OAPEN work with IRUS-UK, a Jisc-funded repository and infrastructure service in order to produce COUNTER compliant usage data. The period covered by the data is from 11 March to 31 August 2014.

Statistics by Collection

Statistics by Title

Global impact

Top 20 countries

Where are KU Pilot Collection books being read?

Downloads by month (Top 20)

KU is also working with HathiTrust to gather usage data. However, at this stage, usage figures provided by HathiTrust are not Counter compliant.

All of the books in the KU Pilot Collection are being made available on licences that allow for sharing by others, as long as it is for non-commercial purposes. This means that users have permission to share PDFs with each other directly via email or messenger. It also means that the books can be made available for download for platforms other than OAPEN and HathiTrust, which KU is partnering with directly.

This approach to licensing is in keeping with the OA goals of the KU model. Ensuring that books can be shared by others seems likely to increase their visibility and discoverability (Snijder 2013a; Willinsky 2006), and in so doing to increase their reach and impact. Other organisations have already begun making Pilot Collection titles available via alternative channels: Unglue.it has posted the KU Pilot Collection to the Internet Archive, for example.

The corollary of allowing much wider sharing of KU books is that gathering comprehensive usage data becomes much more challenging. It seems likely that downloads visible via the OAPEN and HathiTrust sites are just a fraction of the total number relating to any of the titles in the Pilot Collection.

Nonetheless, KU is working towards providing institution-specific usage information to its Charter Member libraries. It is also developing a research agenda exploring the methodologies that might be used to provide stakeholders with useful information about the reach and impact of OA books; how such information might be gathered and shared transparently; and whether usage data associated with KU titles might feed into Alternative Impact Metrics for books (Altmetrics).

The agenda that KU set for itself when it was established in 2012 and for libraries, publishers, authors and readers, was no less than revolutionary. Frances Pinter and her team sought to secure the future of monographs by widening access to them. In order to help global markets for scholarly books to operate more effectively, KU set out to develop a coordinating mechanism that would maximise the value that established institutions (publishers, libraries and OA digital platforms) added to scholarly communication processes as they related to long-form publications. It also secured the funding necessary to run a major global Pilot of the model that it was proposing, and offered itself as a trusted, neutral broker between libraries and publishers. Its ultimate goal was to create a sustainable, scalable route to OA for specialist scholarly books, and to affect a positive change across the global monograph ecosystem.

The unequivocally positive outcomes of the Pilot highlight the power of international coordination and trusted, neutral, intermediaries to enable innovation in scholarly communication. Enthusiasm for the KU model continues to be demonstrated by the rate at which libraries and publishers are registering their interest in participating in future rounds. Since March 2014 more than 100 libraries have pre-registered for future rounds. KU is also operating a waiting list of publishers that have indicated that they would like to offer books to libraries for unlatching. So far over thirty have signed up. Although the Pilot demonstrated significant interest among libraries, publishers, research funders and authors in the KU model, its limited scope left some critical issues unresolved. These include ensuring that the process of unlatching books through KU is integrated effectively into the workflows of libraries and publishers working at scale; the approach to recognising additional format purchases, which may present practical challenges for libraries and publishers when larger numbers of books are involved; and the extent to which the KU model can support ‘pure OA’ publishers.

Publishers that are committed to making books available in OA immediately upon publication, regardless of the willingness of the library community to ‘unlatch’ a particular title. Open Book Publishers is one example.

KU is now working with library, publishing and funding communities to explore possibilities for scaling, including opportunities to partner with established players in the scholarly communication market in order to achieve this. It is also working with university-based researchers, OA platforms and libraries to understand data generated by the Pilot, and to ensure that this information is shared with KU Charter Members and the wider community of monograph stakeholders. Key themes of this research work include:

The proof-of-concept Pilot demonstrated that global communities of monograph stakeholders are eager to work together in new ways to secure positive change for monograph markets, and an open future for long-form publications. Creative, collaborative approaches to supporting OA will be essential to ensuring the widest possible access to high quality Open publishing opportunities for authors; as well as the visibility and discoverability of OA works.

Core Team

Dr Frances Pinter is a serial entrepreneur who has been at the forefront of innovation in the publishing industry for nearly forty years. She is passionate about books, and about the potential of new technology to increase access to knowledge. As the founding publisher at Bloomsbury Academic, Pinter pioneered the use of open content licences for Humanities and Social Sciences monographs. Under her leadership, Bloomsbury took the bold step of ‘giving books away for free’ in digital form, using Creative Commons Non-Commercial licences and demonstrated that doing so made good commercial sense. As the Publisher of the Churchill Archive for Bloomsbury, Pinter used digital technology to demonstrate the ways in which the world can interact with iconic historical documents. Frances has a track record of finding innovative ways to increase access to knowledge. She was Publishing Director at the Soros Foundation (Open Society Institute), which involved supporting the growth of publishing industries in transition countries after the fall of communism. In the late 90s she established eIFL, a library consortium that straddles nearly 50 countries. Earlier in her career she founded Pinter Publishers that also owned Leicester University Press and established the imprint Belhaven Press. Frances was a Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics and a Visiting Fellow at the Big Innovation Centre in London. For more information see www.pinter.org.uk

Associate Professor Lucy Montgomery is a Principal Research Fellow at the Centre for Culture and Technology at Curtin University. She is also Deputy Director for KU. For the duration of the KU Pilot she was based at the Big Innovation Centre in London, with generous support from Queensland University of Technology. Lucy trained as a China specialist at the University of Adelaide, before going to complete a PhD in Media and Cultural Studies at Queensland University of Technology. She has a decade of experience as both a researcher and as project manager, working on major international research projects tracing the emergence of China’s creative industries. Her research focuses on the impact of transformative technological change on the growth of the creative economy.

Leon Loberman has worked in the IT industry for over 30 years, covering a broad range of disciplines from IT Operations, through Applications Development to Strategic Planning. Leon has also held senior business roles including Third Party Distribution Partnership Manager for financial data at FT Extel and Head of Operations and Technology at Extenza, hosting academic and scientific journals. More recently, Leon has been providing project management consultancy to Oxford University Press on a number of projects, as well as other technology-focused projects across a broad range of industries.

Christina Emery is a multi-lingual administrator whose experience includes work in publishing, education, events and hospitality, intergovernmental and financial services. She has also contributed to printed and online publications as editor, proofreader and translator.

Christina studied French with German at the University of Leeds before moving to Germany to work for the European Patent Office, disseminating procedural information about European and international patents to inventors, attorneys and the general public.

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