Project Network Open Access Consortium Education for E-books and Journals (edu_consort_oa)

The Open Access Consortium for Education for E-books and Journals (edu_consort_oa) is a joint project that promotes an open access culture in the field of education. The project is divided into three sub-areas:

• Crowdfunding for monographs and anthologies: A crowdfunding project will support 20 titles each from the fields of educational science, educational research, and subject didactics as open access e-books. Libraries and information institutions will contribute to the financing of this package using project funds from the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology, and Space (BMFTR). An expert committee comprising members from educational associations will select the titles according to defined formal and scientific criteria. All specialist publishers may submit a maximum of five titles for funding.
• Crowdfunding for academic journals: In line with the ‘subscribe-to-open’ model, existing subscription-based journals are to be converted to open access. Alongside financial contributions from libraries and information institutions, project funds from the BMFTR are available for this purpose. Academic journals that receive funding in this way are selected in advance by a specialist committee based on formal and scientific criteria.
• To make both crowdfunding processes sustainable, efforts are being made to establish consortia and share knowledge.

The OA Consortium Education is built on existing specialist publication infrastructures, such as the peDOCS repository and the German Education Index . It is closely coordinated with the Specialist Information Service (FID) for Education and Educational Research, which has already successfully completed its first crowdfunding campaign. The project is therefore being carried out through a proven collaboration between the DIPF | Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education (DIPF), the University Library of Humboldt University Berlin (UB HU) and the University Library of Erlangen-Nürnberg (UB FAU).

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