Pablo Markin, in a [recent post](https://openresearch.community/posts/the-open-research-community-in-2020-a-year-in-review) touting the [Open Research Community](https://openresearch.community)'s 2020 reach:
> In the course of 2020, 153 posts and 151 documents have been added to the Open Research Community (ORC), which reflects its intention to serve as a resource for expert knowledge and content in the domain of Open Access.
What Markin [does not mention](https://openresearch.community/posts/the-open-research-community-in-2020-a-year-in-review) is that the [Open Research Community](https://openresearch.community) (ORC) is yet another initiative of the [stealth for-profit](https://poynder.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-oa-interviews-frances-pinter.html) [Knowledge Unlatched](https://knowledgeunlatched.org) (KU). Nor does Markin, identified as the ORC's "Community Manager," disclose KU's backing in his original ORC [announcement post](https://openresearch.community/posts/59172-the-open-research-community-reasons-aims-audiences) from a year ago. Nor is there any mention of KU in the platform's [FAQs](https://openresearch.community/pages/FAQ).
This is not a new pattern for [KU](https://knowledgeunlatched.org). Founded as a nonprofit in 2012, the core of Knowledge Unlatched was [acquired](https://poynder.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-oa-interviews-frances-pinter.html) by Sven Fund's for-profit consultancy in 2016. The organization's new, profit-making status was, in effect, a shadily kept secret which—when revealed—caused an outcry. To this day, despite multiple pleas to Fund and his board, it is still almost impossible to unearth its for-profit status on KU's [flashy .org website](https://knowledgeunlatched.org).
Recall, too, that in 2019 Fund launched the [Open Research Library](https://knowledgeunlatched.org/openresearchlibrary/), which effectively—in its first version—scraped OA books that it arguably had no right to host (for those with ["NC" licenses](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_NonCommercial_license), at least). KU was roundly criticized at the time. [ScholarLed](https://blog.scholarled.org/), the coalition of nonprofit publishers, issued a [scathing statement](https://blog.scholarled.org/open-research-library/). KU's moves since Fund's acquisition, the group wrote, "increasingly look like OA platform capitalism and rent-seeking":
> There is a worrying drift here in KU’s operations from a community-minded, non-profit initiative invested in helping libraries and publishers to work collaboratively to open front- and back-list book titles, to an aggressively competitive commercial firm intent on pursuing a centralized platform for the delivery of multiple varieties of OA content and associated “services” (KU has also recently moved into [journal flipping](http://www.knowledgeunlatched.org/ku-journal-flipping/) and [analytics](http://www.knowledgeunlatched.org/ku-open-analytics/)).
Which brings us back to KU's [Open Research Community](https://openresearch.community), launched almost exactly a year after Fund's 2019 gambit, the Open Research Library. KU's [official press release](https://knowledgeunlatched.org/2020/04/open-research-community-launches/) does identify the ORC as a KU "initiative." But nowhere does the [release](https://knowledgeunlatched.org/2020/04/open-research-community-launches/) disclose KU's for-profit status, not even in its ID footer. Quite the contrary.
So it's no surprise that the [ORC](https://openresearch.community) is built on the venture-funded SaaS company [Zapnito](https://zapnito.com/)'s platform. Zapnito's other clients, touted on its [landing page](https://zapnito.com), include Elsevier, Springer Nature, and Wiley. CEO and co-founder Charles Thiede started the company ("Powering expert communities") after a [long career](https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlesthiede/?originalSubdomain=uk) at [Informa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informa), the conglomerate owner of Taylor & Francis.
So yet again, and without repetence, Fund and KU have made a stealthy move to monetize OA infrastructure.