Redux regenerates
The third University Press Redux conference, due to be take place last month in Cambridge, but postponed last month due to the coronavirus, will now take the form of a series of webinars, joint hosts Cambridge University Press and the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) have announced. The first in the series, Monographs, open access and public policy: UKRI OA consultation 2020, will take place on Thursday 23 April at 15:00 UK time: moderator Sarah Faulder (PLS) will be joined by Richard Fisher and Research England Senior Policy Adviser Helen Snaith. Registration is free.
Meanwhile, publishers across the humanities and social sciences have continued to respond to the coronavirus lockdown – which has closed universities (and their physical libraries) across the globe – by removing restrictions to their online content. Some have made their ebooks freely available through platforms like Project MUSE, while others have allowed upgraded library access to purchased titles from single-user to unlimited. Many have also made textbooks freely available – JISC has partnered with Kortext and academic publishers including Pearson, Cengage, Taylor & Francis, and Wiley – to launch the Free Student eTextbook Programme (FSTP) to make tens of thousands of textbooks available to 2.7m UK and Irish students for the remainder of the semester.
Knowledge Unlatched launches new platform, renews two collections
Knowledge Unlatched (KU) has launched a new interactive platform enabling users to expand their professional networks on the topics of Open Access (OA), Open Research and Open Science. Free to use, the Open Research Community (ORC) is intended to support the worldwide exchange of information on future-oriented research and OA publishing by bringing together libraries, publishers and researchers; it combines an open access-focused professional network – with a range of channels covering advocacy, content, players, disciplines, and bibliometrics – with conversation rooms devoted to topics including open access case studies, policies, and market research.
The organisation has also announced the renewal of two of its Open Access collections, originally launched in 2017 as projects on three-year funding models. KU Select 2017 HSS Journals and Language Science Press (LSP) Books saw 16 Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) journals and 90 books on linguistics made openly available; KU is now inviting libraries worldwide to sign up to crowdfund the publication of five HSS journals and 90 new books (30 per year) in linguistics, without processing charges, over the period 2021-23; its research indicates that the five flipped journals have grown in size and relevance since switching to open access.
Another new partner for the Open Library of the Humanities
The Open Library of the Humanities is celebrating another new partner for its Library Partnership Subsidy system. Leibniz-Centre General Linguistics (ZAS), a non-university research centre located in the federal state of Berlin, is focused on exploring and describing the structure of natural language and the breadth of its variation.
Alastair Horne is a PhD student at the British Library and Bath Spa University.