K|N Consultants | Help us launch the Open Access Network!

"What is the Open Access Network (OAN)? The OAN, being launched in the next few months by K|N Consultants, looks to tackle head-on the challenge of OA business models for disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. The OAN provides a broad and transformative solution for sustainable OA publishing and archiving that is complementary, not competitive, with other OA funding approaches. The OAN model, as spelled out in our white paper, proposes that all institutions of higher education contribute to systemic support of the research process itself, including its scholarly output. It is a bold rethinking of the economics of OA by way of partnerships among scholarly societies, academic libraries, and publishers funded by an institutional fee structure based on a student-and-faculty per-capita sliding scale. Core to the model is its insistence on broad institutional support of the scholarly communication infrastructure itself, not on any particular format (e.g., books, journals, website). We at K|N Consultants, a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization, will launch the OAN in early 2015 and are beginning now to seek funding that will support a series of pilot projects designed to test the model. To do this, we need your help. Please donate any amount you can, whether $5 or $50,000 — or anything in between. All donations are tax deductible in the United States, and all donations from anywhere in the world are welcomed, with sincere thanks. Please give generously. Donations may be made online (either one-time or ongoing) via the 'Donate' button in the navigation bar at the top of this page or by check, payable to K|N Consultants, sent to 238 West 106th Street 6F, New York NY 10025."