25 February 2021
In the joint project, the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG) and Knowledge Unlatched (KU) will work together to improve the publication of publisher-independent, non-APC Open Access (OA) journals through a consortial support structure. The focus is on small, transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary subjects, as current funding options have not been effective, and the responsibilities of the subject communities are often unclear. The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) will fund the project for 24 months from April 2021 and thus support the transformation of scientific publishing towards OA.
The project develops a sustainable model of publisher-independent, quality-assured OA journals in small, transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary subjects. In this regard, it follows-up on a major result of the project “Innovative Open Access in Small Sciences” (2019-2021, DFG-funding). Furthermore, Scholar-led+ improves communication between central actors in the OA ecosystem: funding and research institutions, professional societies, OA journals, and new quality-assured publication projects.
"With this project, a decisive step towards inclusive networking within the scientific publication landscape can be achieved," says Marcel Wrzesinski, OA Officer at HIIG. "It is precisely the diversity of the OA ecosystems and the differences in the various disciplines that have made access to funding particularly challenging so far."
"We are pleased to have the opportunity to contribute our experience with consortial funding of scientific OA content to this project," adds Philipp Hess, Head of Publisher Relations at KU. "It is precisely the diversity of the content and the players involved that will lead to a solution in which everyone comes together for the benefit of the scholarly community."