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What is open access?

The Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) statement defines for scientific literature: "Open access means that such literature should be freely and publicly available on the Internet so that interested parties may read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, reference, and otherwise use the full texts in any lawful manner, without financial, legal, or technical barriers beyond those associated with Internet access itself. In all matters of reprinting and distribution, and in all matters of copyright generally, the only restriction should be to leave the respective authors in control of their work and to secure their right to have their work properly acknowledged and cited." (Budapest Open Access Initiative)

The aim of Open Access is to make scientific literature and scientific materials freely accessible to all users: free of charge and as free as possible from technical and legal barriers. A key aspect is maximising the dissemination of scientific information, as called for in the Berlin Declaration. This was formulated in 2003 and has since been signed by renowned research organisations and universities (e.g. German Research Foundation (DFG), Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF), Fund for the Promotion of Scientific Research (FWF), Rectors' Conference of the Swiss Universities (CRUS), German Rectors' Conference (HRK), Max Planck Society (MPG), CERN) (on BOAI and the Berlin Declaration, see the pages on the history of Open Access and on positions on Open Access).

Widely recognised reasons for Open Access are, in addition to direct access for all people and the best possible attention to the results of scientific research, the speed of publication and access, the possibilities for further use (depending on the usage licences) and aspects of transparency and quality assurance.

In order to facilitate access to scientific literature, two different strategies are often distinguished in discussion and practice: The so-called golden road refers to measures that focus on OA primary publications, currently primarily OA journals. The so-called green road, on the other hand, is understood to mean the additional provision of publications that have appeared in (closed-access) journals - this primarily includes repositories or document servers.

 

Especially for the golden road, licences of use that regulate OA rights and specify what the public is allowed to do with the publications are of particular importance. If blanket grants of rights beyond free reading are dispensed with, far-reaching demands from OA declarations cannot be met/fulfilled. However, the granting of free licences by authors sometimes collides with other aspects - e.g. if the corresponding rights have already been exclusively transferred to a publisher in advance.

In recent years, the principle of Open Access has been strongly anchored in declarations of intent by universities and research institutions, in funding conditions of third-party funding bodies and, in the meantime, also in legislative proposals. In a diverse landscape of OA journals, publishers and repositories, most traditional academic publishers now also have OA offerings.

The OA movement is currently receiving new impetus from increased developments in the fields of Open Research Data and Open Science.

Source: open-access.net

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