Technical Services: Knowledge Unlatched

Pilot Phase

Round 1 - Pilot (2014)

Miami University Libraries joined the pilot project in 2014 as a charter member along with about 300 other libraries from around the world.
Each library contributed approximately $1,500 for this pilot phase.
MUL paid $1,145 into the pilot phase of KU.
The pilot included 28 titles which are available through the library catalog.

Additional Information

Spreadsheet with bibliographic information for all titles and a list of institutional participants in the pilot project
Knowledge Unlatched website
Pilot prospectus (contains pilot project details)
KU Pilot FAQ
KU Pilot title availability status
KU General Usage Data

General Info

Knowledge Unlatched is an international e-book publishing project that allows a variety of scholarly monographs to be made open access (free to the world) through the support of participating libraries. These books are from well-established university and scholarly presses and will also be published in print format.

KU Select 2018 (Round 5; 2018-2019)

Miami University Libraries has pledged to support the front list titles for STEM ($1,850) AND HSS ($8,305) using one time endowed funds.

KU 2018 costs
443 e-books available
- 343 HSS Books - 151 front list (Nov 2018-Nov 2019); 192 back list (2007-2017) - $11,089
- 100 STEM Books - 20 front list (Nov 2018-Nov 2019); 80 back list (2007-2017) - $3,090
11 e-journals available
- 3 HSS Journals - 2 subscription/hybrid, 1 OA - $360 / year (3 year commitment)
- 8 STEM Journals - all subscription/hybrid - $4,280 / year (3 year commitment)
Participation from more than 70 leading scholarly publishers from 5 continents, including university presses, commercial publishers, and Open Access publishers
Curated by the KU Title Selection Committee consisting of 160 librarians
19 subject areas in the Humanities and Social Sciences and 9 within the Science, Technology, Engineering and Medicine subject areas
Creative Commons licenses - hosted by OAPEN, JSTOR, BiblioLabs and MUSEOpen and also preserved by CLOCKSS and Portico.
High Quality MARC Records will be provided by OCLC

KU Select 2017 Books (Round 4; 2017-2018)

MUL pledged to support the KU Select 2017 frontlist e-books (151 titles) for a total of $8,003. 107 of the 151 frontlist titles were ultimately published in 2018-2019.

KU Select 2016 (Round 3; 2016-2017)

MUL pledged to support all KU Select 2016 titles for $10,780. KU Select 2016 contains 343 titles from 54 publishers: 147 frontlist titles and 196 backlist titles.

Additional information:

Round 2 (2015-2016)

KU invited libraries to pledge a capped maximum of $3,891 to unlatch the Round 2 Collection of 78 titles from 26 recognized publishers, which is just under $50 per book. Libraries needed to pledge to a minimum of six packages in order to participate. The minimum pledge needed to unlatch six packages was $2,643.

Publishers have agreed to recognize additional format purchases by participating libraries as a contribution towards the cost of unlatching the collection. If a title in the KU Round 2 Collection is ordered in any print or electronic format through any channel before 30 April 2016, the library will receive a deduction on the KU unlatching fee of that title.

A service charge of 15% to cover KU’s running costs (which were previously covered by grants) has been divided between the publishing and library communities, with 7.5% of the title fee being covered by each party. The price of each package already reflects this service charge.

All Round 2 packages were unlatched.

Round 2 Additional Information