Research projects, Scientific Publications

Project KOALA’s (“Konsortiale Open-Access-Lösungen aufbauen”, Building consortial solutions for Open Access) search for institutions to participate in the collaborative funding of the first two bundles has been successful. From January 2023, a total of six titles from the media and social sciences, which have been offered in the so-called pledging phase since the end of May, will be jointly funded for three years by over 70 different institutions.

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 book series to operate sustainably without costs for authors or readers. All contributions published during the funding period are freely accessible worldwide.

KOALA Media Studies 2023

• Bewegtbilder
• Yearbook of Moving Image Studies

KOALA Social Sciences 2023

• Forum Qualitative Social Research
• GENDER
• Open Gender Journal
• sub\urban

From 2023 onwards, the publishers commit to meeting the KOALA requirements, which include not only Open Access, but also aspects such as long-term digital preservation, metadata standards, ethical guidelines and no data tracking. The standards are based on Plan S, a strategy to promote open access to publicly funded scientific knowledge, and other relevant initiatives. The publishers and editors participating in KOALA receive extensive support in implementing these standards.

The full list of participating institutions can be found on the project website https://projects.tib.eu/koala/en/supporters.

With this achievement, KOALA has succeeded in developing a model for Open Access consortia that enables authors to publish without additional costs and without bureaucratic effort. “In this model, libraries take on 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 OA,” she 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 Marco Tullney, who heads the project.

The project partners have thus achieved their goal of making a further contribution to a fair and sustainable infrastructure for scholarly publications. KOALA is a cooperation between TIB and the Communication, Information and Media Centre (KIM) at the University of Konstanz and receives funding by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) until the end of January 2023 for establishing the business model and service. After that, KOALA will be continued as a regular service by the project partners.

New round of funding from 2024

Preparations for the next funding round 2024-2026 are already underway. Interested journals or series are welcome to contact KOALA. KOALA consortia fund journals and book series that provide direct access to full texts without author-facing costs. Candidates include both publications that are already open access and those that are currently only accessible to subscribers and wish to change their model. Journals or publication series that currently charge publication fees – so-called Article Processing Charges (APCs) – but want to abandon this practice are also suitable candidates.

The pledging phase for this funding round is expected to start at the end of May 2023, when supporters can commit to contributing to the costs of funding the OA publications in the bundle.

Further information on the KOALA project: https://projects.tib.eu/koala/en/
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About TIB

As the German National Library of Science and Technology, TIB provides science and industry with literature and information on technology, architecture, chemistry, computer science, mathematics and physics. TIB is the world's largest specialist library in its fields, and has an outstanding collection of basic and highly specialised technical and scientific information. This also includes objects such as 3D models, research data and audiovisual media. TIB is committed to openness, i.e. open access to information, publications and scientific data: It aims to ensure that information and knowledge are more transparent, accessible and reusable.

TIB continues to expand its role as a German information centre for the digitisation of science and technology and conducts applied research and development to generate new services and optimise existing ones. The focus is on Responsible Data Science, non-textual materials, Scientific Data Management, Open Science and Visual Analytics.

The TIB supports specialist and research communities at www.tib.eu with scientific content and digital services in the various phases of scientific work. The TIB's AV-Portal (av.tib.eu) allows users to search the large stock of scientific videos based on semantic analysis methods. By assigning DOI names (Digital Object Identifiers), the TIB ensures the quality as well as the permanent availability and referencability of scientific objects.
As a regular host of international conferences and specialist forums, the TIB offers platforms for networking and exchange at the crossroads of research, industry and information science.

TIB is a public-law foundation of the Federal State of Lower Saxony. The library is a member of the Leibniz Association.

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Wissenschaftlicher Ansprechpartner:
https://www.tib.eu/en – More information about the TIB – Leibniz Information Centre for Science and Technology and University Library
https://av.tib.eu – Go to TIB AV-Portal

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Weitere Informationen:
https://www.tib.eu/en – More information about the TIB – Leibniz Information Centre for Science and Technology and University Library
https://projects.tib.eu/koala/en/ – Further information on the KOALA project
https://av.tib.eu – Go to TIB AV-Portal