There are three main statements that defined Open Access as it was emerging in the 2000's: the Budapest Open Access Initiative (2001), the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing (2003), and the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities (2003). The Budapest Open Access Initiative gives this definition of open access:
"By 'open access' to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited."
What is it?
Open Access is a growing international movement that uses the Internet to throw open the locked doors that once hid knowledge. Encouraging the unrestricted sharing of research results with everyone, the Open Access movement is gaining ever more momentum around the world as research funders and policy makers put their weight behind it. (SPARC, About Open Access Week, retrieved October 2021)
Explore the Open Access; Open Science, Open Data; and Open Education tabs in this guide to learn more about these interrelated concepts and about principles and practices for open research, teaching, and learning.
"The Rise of Open Access" by Randall Munroe. Read more about this comic here.
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