Towards a fair approach to scholarly publishing: The KU Leuven Fund for Fair Open Access
| Main Authors: | Mesotten, Laura, Verbeke, Demmy |
|---|---|
| Format: | info Proceeding |
| Bahasa: | eng |
| Terbitan: |
, 2019
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: |
https://zenodo.org/record/3714538 |
Daftar Isi:
- For many years now, opposition against a commercial approach to scholarly publishing has been growing stronger and stronger. The for-profit model leads to publications which are prohibitively expensive, either for the reader or for the researcher, and typically puts commercial partners in control of the dissemination of scholarly work since researchers have to transfer critical aspects of their author’s rights in order to get published. Alternatives such as Green Open Access (whereby researchers make an archival copy of their publication freely available to all), in most fields, do not challenge the traditional commercial publication model enough. Therefore, another alternative is on the rise, namely Fair Open Access. Publications in Fair OA are immediately freely available to all, are produced according to cost-effective (rather than commercial) principles and guarantee full control of researchers over the entire publication process. KU Leuven has been supporting Green OA through its institutional repository Lirias for many years already. As it is clear, however, that Green OA provides some but certainly not all of the solutions, the university was looking to intensify its efforts to maximize scholarly exchange, collaboration and innovation. This resulted in the establishment of the KU Leuven Fund for Fair Open Access in March 2018. The fund provides financial support for the production costs of OA monographs published by Leuven University Press as well as articles in selected OA journals, on the condition that these journals are published according to the Fair OA model and maintain the highest academic standards. Moreover, as of 2019, the fund has broadened its support to various non-profit OA initiatives and, this way, contributes to the development of sustainable OA infrastructure and advocacy activities. This paper analyses current business models for OA, explains the reasoning behind the establishment of the KU Leuven Fund for Fair Open Access, discusses its day-to-day operation and presents its results after one year of operation.