The University of Leeds joins OLH LPS Model

Posted by Paula Clemente Vega on 8 October 2021

We are pleased to announce that the University of Leeds has joined the Open Library of Humanities' Library Partnership Subsidy system. The University of Leeds is a public research university in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. It was officially founded in 1904, but the university's origins can be traced back to the 19th century, when the Yorkshire College of Science was established. Today, the University of Leeds is among the Russell Group of research-intensive universities and is one of the largest higher education institutions in the UK, renowned globally for the quality of its teaching and research.

With over 38,000 students – 12,000 of them international, from more than 130 countries – the university prides itself on being a multicultural and international institution. Teaching staff have been awarded 26 National Teaching Fellowships, more than any other university in the UK. Notable alumni include current Leader of the Labour Party Keir Starmer, former Secretary of State Jack Straw, former co-chairman of the Conservative Party Sayeeda Warsi, Piers Sellers (NASA astronaut) and six Nobel laureates.

The Open Library of Humanities is an award-winning, academic-led, gold open-access publisher of 28 journals with no author-facing charges. With initial funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and subsequent support from Arcadia, a charitable fund, the platform covers its costs by payments from an international library consortium, rather than any author fee. This funding mechanism enables equitable open access in the humanities disciplines, with charges neither to readers nor authors.

"We are very pleased to have the support of the University of Leeds," Paula Clemente Vega, marketing officer at the Open Library of Humanities, said. "Since we launched our new OLH Jisc Agreement just before summer, many UK's institutions have re/joined the Open Library of Humanities' library consortium. We are also very pleased to welcome new member universities among them, such as the prestigious University of Leeds. It is thanks to this sort of institutional support that we can continue to provide an APC-free model for OA publishing in the humanities. We wouldn't survive without the generous support of our member libraries."

Jane Saunders, Head of Collections Services commented: "The University of Leeds is committed to open research and dissemination, so that the results of our research can benefit the global community and be used for the common good in a sustainable way. We are delighted to support the work of the Open Library of Humanities in our common goal to make scholarly publishing fairer and more accessible for all."




If you like the work that the Open Library of Humanities is doing, please consider asking your institution to support us financially. We cannot operate without our library members. More details for libraries can be found at: https://www.openlibhums.org/plugins/supporters/signup/.