Non-profit group Knowledge Unlatched is piloting a collective procurement approach to open access books. The model depends on many libraries from around the world sharing the payment of a single title fee to a publisher, in return for a book being made available on a Creative Commons license via the open access repository service OAPEN and the HathiTrust Digital Library as a fully downloadable PDF.

Because the title fee is a fixed amount, as more libraries participate in Knowledge Unlatched, the per-library cost of securing open access for each book is reduced.  By the end of February 2014 about 300 libraries had signed up to the pilot.

The Knowledge Unlatched Pilot Collection includes 28 new books from 13 recognised scholarly publishers.

Read more at: The Chronicle of Higher education Issue No:314

Watch the video on how it works at: knowledgeunlatched.org/about/how-it-works/