The search for institutions to participate in the collaborative funding of the first two bundles in the KOALA project ("Konsortiale Open-Access-Lösungen aufbauen" – Building consortial solutions for Open Access) has been successful. From January 2023, a total of six titles from the media and social sciences will be jointly funded for three years by almost 70 different institutions. The publishing bodies commit to meeting the KOALA minimum standards from 2023, which include not only open access, but also issues such as long-term archiving, metadata standards, ethical guidelines and no data tracking. The standards are modelled on Plan S, a publicly funded strategy to promote open access to scientific knowledge, and other relevant initiatives. The editorial offices and publishers participating in KOALA receive extensive support in implementing these standards.
Publishing without additional costs and bureaucracy
The KOALA consortium model is intended, among other things, to offer authors the opportunity to publish open access without additional costs and bureaucratic effort. "In this model, libraries play an important role in financing open access as part of their service mandate," explains Dr. Irina Sens, Deputy Director of TIB – Leibniz Information Centre for Science and Technology. "In this way, they make a decisive contribution to the open access transformation and to establishing fair and sustainable ways of funding diamond open access," Sens continues. "KOALA ties in with traditional consortium models, supports the transition of journals to open access and enables reliable funding of publications from traditional publishers as well as publisher-independent, scholar-led journals," adds KOALA project manager Marco Tullney.
New funding round from 2024
The pledging phase for this funding round 2024-2026 is expected to start at the end of May 2023. KOALA consortia fund journals and publication series that provide immediate access to full texts and do not charge publication fees. Candidates include both publications that are already open access and those that are currently only accessible to subscribers and want to change their model. Journals or series that currently charge publication fees – so-called article processing charges (APCs) – but want to abandon this practice are also suitable candidates.
About the KOALA project
KOALA is a collaborative project of the TIB – Leibniz Information Centre for Science and Technology and the Communication, Information and Media Centre (KIM) of the University of Konstanz and is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) until the end of January 2023 to build up the business model and the service. After that, KOALA will be continued as a regular service of the partners. In addition to libraries, research institutions, foundations, museums, associations, companies and individuals can also participate in KOALA consortia. The supporters contribute according to their size and the volume of the bundled publications. In this way, they enable the journals and publication series to operate sustainably without costs for authors or readers. All contributions published during the funding period are freely accessible worldwide. The complete list of currently participating institutions can be found on the KOALA project website at https://projects.tib.eu/koala/en/project/.
Source: https://www.tib.eu/en/tib/news-and-events/news/details/koala-projekt-feiert-erfolg