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Policies and Statements
Up one levelThe first major international statement on open access was the Budapest Open Access Initiative in February 2002, launched by the Open Society Institute, which provided a definition of open access, and has a growing list of signatories. Two further statements followed: the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing in June 2003 and the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities in October 2003.
Budapest Open Access Initiative
The Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) arises from a small but lively meeting convened in Budapest by the Open Society Institute (OSI) on 1-2 December 2001. It was the first major declaration of support for open access and has been signed by over 5,818 individuals (researchers, publishers) and organisations (universities, laboratories, libraries, foundations, journals, learned societies, and kindred open-access initiatives) from around the world.
Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing
A set of principles drafted during a one-day meeting held in April 2003 at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Chevy Chase, Maryland. The Statement is divided into a working definition of 'open access publication' and followed by the reports of three working groups.
Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities
Drafted in accordance with the spirit of the Budapest Open Access Initiative, the ECHO Charter and the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing, the Berlin Declaration emerged from a conference on open access hosted by the Max Planck Society in Berlin in 2003. It aims at promoting the Internet as a functional instrument for a global scientific knowledge base and human reflection and to specify measures which research policy makers, research institutions, funding agencies, libraries, archives and museums must consider. To date over 280 organisations have signed the Berlin Declaration.
IFLA Statement on Open Access to Scholarly Literature and Research Documentation
Adopted by the Governing Board of IFLA at its meeting in The Hague on 5 December 2003, the IFLA Statement takes the definition of 'open access publication' from the Wellcome Trust Position statement in support of open access publishing and was based on the definition arrived at by delegates who attended the open access publishing meeting convened by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in July 2003.
Access to Research Outputs
In 2008, Research Councils UK funded an independent study into open access, which was conducted by SQW Consulting and LISU, Loughborough University. Its purpose was to identify the effects and impacts of open access on publishing models and institutional repositories in light of national and international trends, including the impact of open access on the quality and efficiency of scholarly outputs, specifically journal articles. The report from the study was published in April 2009.
Wellcome Trust Position Statement in support of open and unrestricted access to published research
Wellcome Trust (UK) was one of the world's first major research funders to put in place an open access mandate. The Wellcome Trust believes that "maximising the distribution of its papers - by providing free, online access - is the most effective way of ensuring that the research they fund can be accessed, read and built upon. In turn, this will foster a richer research culture".
