Policies and Statements

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.

admin commented 05 December, 2006

Comment body

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.

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".

ACRL Principles and Strategies for the Reform of Scholarly Communication

This document was developed by the ACRL Scholarly Communications Committee and approved by the ACRL Board of Directors in June 2003 at the ALA Annual Conference in Toronto. It is intended to be a foundation statement that provides overall guidance to the ACRL scholarly communications initiative.

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.

OECD Principles and Guidelines for Access to Research Data from Public Funding

These Principles and Guidelines are the outcome of a call by Science and Technology Ministers on the OECD in 2004, to develop a set of guidelines based on commonly agreed principles to facilitate cost-effective access to digital research data from public funding. They are intended to assist all actors involved when trying to improve the international sharing of, and access to, research data.