![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/isnews\/files\/2017\/03\/ku_mark_RGB_large.jpg\")
<\/a>Open Access books<\/h2>\nOpen Access books are online publications that are freely available to anyone with access to the internet. This means that you do not need to be a member of a university or a library to use them and you do not have to pay to use or download them. The main benefit is wider readership and increased use.<\/p>\n
But the publication costs need to be paid for somehow.<\/p>\n
Knowledge Unlatched<\/h2>\n
One answer is Knowledge Unlatched<\/a> which is a not-for-profit company that was established in 2012 with the aim of creating a sustainable model for Open Access book publishing.<\/p>\n Knowledge Unlatched uses a consortium model in which publishers are asked \u00a0to offer newly published books to libraries on the basis that they are made immediately Open Access upon publication. In return the consortium pays a fee for each title.\u00a0 Libraries around the world are then invited to join the consortium and share the costs of the title fees.\u00a0The more libraries who take part in the consortium, the lower the cost for each institution.<\/p>\n The University of Kent was one of the\u00a0270 libraries\u00a0from 21 countries that pledged money towards making a further 343 books freely available. 147 of these are new titles and 196 backlist e-books.\u00a0This brings the total to 449 e-books made available as Open Access via Knowledge Unlatched\u00a0since 2014.<\/p>\n The list of other libraries who took part is here<\/a>.<\/p>\n 54 publishers took part and offered to make some of their books Open Access for a fixed fee;\u00a0these included Cambridge University Press and Manchester University Press.<\/p>\n The Humanities and Social Sciences titles cover sixteen subject areas. The titles in the latest Open Access collection are listed here<\/a><\/p>\n The books can be found in Google and other search engines. They can be downloaded for free as PDFs and EPUBs. They are also available on the OAPEN<\/a>\u00a0platform. They will soon be available in our LibrarySearch <\/a>too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The University of Kent has joined Knowledge Unlatched to help make 343 more books freely available worldwide Open Access books Open Access books are online … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41249,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[140826],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/isnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9187"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/isnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/isnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/isnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/41249"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/isnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9187"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/isnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9205,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/isnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9187\/revisions\/9205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/isnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/isnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/isnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}How Knowledge Unlatched works<\/h2>\n
Knowledge Unlatched, the University of Kent and the latest collection<\/h2>\n
The libraries in the consortium<\/h3>\n
The publishers<\/h3>\n
The book titles<\/h3>\n
How to find and use the books<\/h2>\n