From: Ann Shumelda Okerson <[log in to unmask]> Date: Tue, 4 Jun 2019 21:32:57 -0400 Recommended: June 4th's Scholarly Kitchen posting by Joe Esposito: Internal Contradictions with Open Access Books "Knowledge Unlatched (KU) is back in the news. Founded as a not-for-profit open access (OA) book publisher by Dr. Frances Pinter, the organization has gone through a couple iterations until re-emerging as a for-profit company headed by Dr. Sven Fund. (Despite its for-profit status, KU continues to use its old URL, with a .org domain.) KU is now hard at work on developing its program, including its business model. A major piece of this, recently announced in an interview by Fund, is the Open Research Library (ORL), which aims to be a comprehensive collection of all OA books, of which there are now (according to KU) about 15,000-20,000, with approximately 4,000 more being added every year. KU can aggregate all these books, which have many publishers, because of the terms of their Creative Commons (CC) licenses, which encourage reuse and sharing. And that is what has set off a seismic disturbance." Long story short, Esposito explains that KU's ORL is drawing fire because it's aggregating a growing number of Open Access books, a perfectly legal act, but according to some this violates the "spirit of open access." I believe that librarians were consulted in the development of this platform. https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2019/06/04/internal-contradictions-with-open-access-books/