With a [hat tip](https://poynder.blogspot.com/2013/10/lets-be-open-about-open-access.html) to the indispensable [Richard Poynder](https://richardpoynder.co.uk/about.html), here is a quick follow up to [yesterday's post on Knowledge Unlatched's latest move](https://www.jeffpooley.com/2021/01/knowledge-unlatched-strikes-again/) to disguise its for-profit status. I focused on KU's [Open Research Community](https://www.jeffpooley.com/2021/01/knowledge-unlatched-strikes-again/) (ORC), launched last year as an [implied nonprofit](https://openresearch.community/posts/59172-the-open-research-community-reasons-aims-audiences). In yesterday's [post](https://www.jeffpooley.com/2021/01/knowledge-unlatched-strikes-again/), I focused on ORC's "Community Manager" Pablo Markin and KU head Sven Fund.

The plot is quite a bit thicker, though I won't do the topic—KU and Sven Fund's persistent failure to disclose—justice in this short follow-up. I hope that a journalist like Poynder will pick up the trail.

It turns out that Fund's use of an astroturf blog goes back to at least 2012, when he was De Gruyter's managing director. Through a newly acquired subsidiary, De Gruyter launched openscience.com—a site with no trace of its corporate origins. Back in 2013, Poynder began digging into who owned the blog. With typical doggedness, he [uncovered](https://poynder.blogspot.com/2013/10/lets-be-open-about-open-access.html) that Fund's De Gruyter was its undisclosed backer. Poynder, however, had to muck through weeks of obfuscation to establish that fact, as he [painstakingly detailed at the time](https://poynder.blogspot.com/2013/10/lets-be-open-about-open-access.html). Fund, on initial contact from Poynder, professed ignorance of the blog, though he admitted to having acquired the openscience.com domain. Only later did Poynder learn that Fund had outbid the Open Science Federation for the domain. Two days after Poynder's [account](https://poynder.blogspot.com/2013/10/lets-be-open-about-open-access.html) was posted, the OpenScience blog added a one-line disclosure of its ownership by De Gruyter's subsidiary (with no mention, initially, of the parent company).

Fund's De Gruyter colleague at the time was none other than Pablo Markin, the current KU employee and ORC "community manager." Markin joined De Gruyter in June 2012, a month before OpenScience launched. Markin [wrote regularly](https://openscience.com/author/pablo-markin/) for the site until December 2019, when he left for Knowledge Unlatched. Two months later, he [announced the Open Research Community](ttps://openresearch.community/posts/59172-the-open-research-community-reasons-aims-audiences) (ORC).

Markin, for years now, has been posting voraciously to a handful of apparently independent OA blogs, all of them hosted on the Francophone [Hypotheses platform](https://hypotheses.org/about-hypotheses): [Open Access Blog](https://oab.hypotheses.org/?s=markin), [Open Economics Blog](https://oeb.hypotheses.org/?s=markin), [Open Culture](https://oc.hypotheses.org/?s=markinan), and [Discussions Générales Open](https://dgo.hypotheses.org/?s=markin). A spot-check shows that most, if not all, of these blogs' posts are authored by Markin. Many, but by no means all, are [dated](https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7915-1703) after his move to KU (and most of these are cross-posted from KU's ORC).

In a fascinating twist, the fourth Hypotheses blog, [Discussions Générales Open](https://dgo.hypotheses.org) (DGO), is an acronymic shuffle from its previous name, De Gruyter Open (DGO), as the [Wayback Machine](https://web.archive.org/web/20191117174512/http://dgo.hypotheses.org/) shows. So the blog's current title—its nod to French readers (though its content is in English)—appears to be a clumsy scrubbing of its De Gruyter origins. More to the point, Markin was writing for the same linked network of generically named Hypotheses blogs (each featuring sidebar links to the others) when he jumped to KU. To state the predictable, nowhere do the newer posts note Markin's KU employment, even though his posting work is noted on his [KU employee profile](https://knowledgeunlatched.org/support-team/).

***

Two depressing codas. I noticed that the longstanding, well-respected blog [No Shelf Required](http://www.noshelfrequired.com/) had been running puff pieces about KU, in the course of researching this post. See, for example, its [writeup](http://www.noshelfrequired.com/knowledge-unlatched-and-partners-launch-open-research-library) of the 2019 launch of KU project [Open Research Library](/)—an initiative [widely criticized](https://blog.scholarled.org/open-research-library/) at the time. Marked an "NSR Editorial," the [piece](http://www.noshelfrequired.com/knowledge-unlatched-and-partners-launch-open-research-library)'s headline was "Knowledge Unlatched and partners launch Open Research Library, an innovative platform with an ambitious goal to host open access books in one place." The subhed: "Congrats, Knowledge Unlatched and its partners on this major achievement." The [post](http://www.noshelfrequired.com/knowledge-unlatched-and-partners-launch-open-research-library/) reads like a press release.

I soon figured out why, after a quick Google search for No Shelf Required's current director, Mirela Roncevic. (The blog was started by an academic librarian in 2008, but [transferred](http://www.noshelfrequired.com/about/) to Roncevic at some point.) You guessed it: Roncevic is in [PR and marketing for KU](https://knowledgeunlatched.org/library-team/)—a fact nowhere acknowledge on No Shelf Required.

The second coda circles back to [yesterday's post](https://www.jeffpooley.com/2021/01/knowledge-unlatched-strikes-again/): I had noted that KU's new "Open Research Community" was run on a venture-backed SaaS [platform](https://zapnito.com), with Elsevier, Wiley, and Springer Nature as other clients. What I didn't know yesterday, but stumbled across today, is that KU's Sven Fund is one of three [venture investors in the company](https://www.crunchbase.com/search/principal.investors/field/organizations/num_investors/zapnito). This, of course, is nowhere disclosed on the ORC site, nor even in the KU [press release](https://knowledgeunlatched.org/2020/04/open-research-community-launches/) touting the platform.

All of this, including the key 2016 [stealth re-launch of KU as Fund's for-profit](https://poynder.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-oa-interviews-frances-pinter.html), is shady at best. Fund repeatedly commits sins of omission in his companies and initiatives, KU above all. The initiatives wrap themselves in the cloth of mission-driven nonprofit-dom, down to .org and .community domain names and—in the case of KU—a genuine nonprofit pedigree. It takes detective work to discover these projects' for-profit status.

Reasonable people can disagree about the [place of profiteering in OA publishing and infrastructure](https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2017/08/15/scholarly-communications-shouldnt-just-be-open-but-non-profit-too/). The same can't be said for *hiding* for-profit status, repeatedly and after several call-outs. KU needs to start disclosing—early and often—its profit-seeking form, as a minimal step toward transparency. As Poynder phrased the question in his [original post](https://poynder.blogspot.com/2013/10/lets-be-open-about-open-access.html): "To what extent should we expect publishers who profess a commitment to Open Access (OA) to be open in other ways too?"

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.

This [big *Times* story on Indiana University of Pennsylvania](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/28/us/college-coronavirus-tuition.html) buries the lede. The 41st paragraph:

> When the 2008 recession hit, many states decimated the budgets for regional campuses of state schools. From that point through 2018, Pennsylvania’s funding per student for higher education fell 33.8 percent, among the steepest declines in the country. In inflation-adjusted terms, the state gives these schools about $220 million less annually than it did in 2000-1. To make up the difference, base tuition rose steadily beyond the cost of inflation: to $7,716 in 2018-19 from $5,358 in 2008-9. In a nutshell, the burden for supporting the system shifted sharply — from the state to the student. In the 1980s, the state paid 75 percent of a student’s load. Now the student pays nearly 75 percent. In Pennsylvania, the average student debt taken on by graduates of state schools rose 35 percent between 2011 and 2018.

It's a [moving piece of narrative journalism](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/28/us/college-coronavirus-tuition.html) on an American style of class warfare—the accelerating disinvestment in the regional public universities that serve a huge if invisible share of students.

Wiley's Judy Verses, in [a Scholarly Kitchen interview](https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2021/01/11/wiley-acquires-hindawi-interview/) on the firm's [acquisition of OA publisher Hindawi](https://newsroom.wiley.com/press-releases/press-release-details/2021/Wiley-Announces-the-Acquisition-of-Hindawi/default.aspx):

> I’ve never seen a great business model not be disrupted. At Wiley, we force ourselves to look around the corner, even if it takes us out of our comfort zone, to continue adapting and evolving to meet customer needs. That pattern is evident with Wiley’s recent acquisitions — zyBooks, Knewton Alta, Atypon, and now Hindawi. [...] This transformation toward open research has really added oxygen to our thinking about who we are serving and what they are trying to accomplish.

Wiley has been somewhat less brazen in its OA bear-hug than, say, fellow oligopolistic Springer Nature. So Verses on Wiley's business-model pivot is an interesting public statement.

There's a lot to digest here, but one unspoken (and unasked about) dimension is the average APC discrepancy between the acquired and acquiree. Wiley's mostly hybrid business rests on the [$3,000-plus APC](https://authorservices.wiley.com/author-resources/Journal-Authors/open-access/article-publication-charges.html), while Hindawi grew fast on the strength of its much lower ([$650 to $2,000-ish](https://www.hindawi.com/publish-research/authors/article-processing-charges/)) charge. That's a major (and completely unstated) reason for Wiley to [keep the brand's separate](https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2021/01/11/wiley-acquires-hindawi-interview/).

eLife head Michael Eisen and his colleagues, announcing its 'publish, then review' model:

The growing popularity of preprints has enabled researchers to make their papers freely and immediately available to anyone with an internet connection. Many eLife authors were early adopters of preprinting, and support within our community continues to expand: a recent internal analysis showed that nearly 70% of papers under review at eLife were already available on bioRxiv, medRxiv or arXiv.

Eisen et al—in an eLife article, fittingly—conclude that the life sciences nonprofit, for all practical purposes, is "no longer a publisher." eLife, they explain with a shade of cheek, has evolved into an "organization that reviews and certifies papers that have already been published."

The paper announces a major strategic shift, one that is plainly meant to serve as a model for the rest of the industry. eLife says it will henceforth review only already-posted preprints, with the aim to manage the (public) peer review. The whole idea is "publication as curation," very much in keeping with the idea of the overlay journal and the call for "next generation repositories".

eLife's long-term goal—a good one—is to kill the 350-year journal format itself.

Speaking of COPIM, here's Martin Eve on a novel OA model that Central European University Press (CEUP) is piloting:

CEUP is creating a sustainable OA publishing model that will give members access to a selection of the extensive backlist, DRM-free and with perpetual access after three years. In return, this membership revenue will then be used to make newly-published books openly accessible to anyone. When the revenue target is met and the entire monograph frontlist is openly accessible, future membership fee rates can be lowered.

It's a brilliant idea, reminiscent of the creative funding models that Eve has pioneered at Open Library of Humanities. CEUP will work with COPIM to roll out the initiative, dubbed "Opening the Future"—with the support of LYRASIS, OAPEN, and book hosting from Project MUSE.

An interesting twist is that CEUP's executive chair is none other than Frances Pinter, the Knowledge Unlatched founder who (around the same time as Eve, in the early 2010s) helped pioneer library-support schemes for OA. Pinter had co-founded CEUP 30 years ago.