Open Access Policy
Open Access Policy
This journal is open access, meaning that all content is freely available at no cost to users or institutions. Users are permitted to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to full-text articles in this journal without prior permission from the publisher or authors. This is in accordance with the Budapest Open Access Initiative.
Budapest Open Access Initiative
Old traditions and new technologies have converged to enable an unprecedented public good. The old tradition was the willingness of scientists and scholars to publish their research in scholarly journals without payment, for the sake of inquiry and knowledge. The new technology is the internet. The public good they make possible is the worldwide electronic distribution of peer-reviewed journal literature and completely free and unrestricted access to it by all scientists, scholars, teachers, students, and other curious individuals. By removing barriers to access to this literature, research will be accelerated, education will be enriched, the learning of the rich can be shared with the poor and the poor can be shared with the rich, making this literature useful, and laying the foundation for uniting humanity in intellectual conversation and the shared pursuit of knowledge.
For various reasons, this kind of free and unrestricted online availability, which we will call open access, has so far been limited to a small subset of the journal literature. However, even within this limited collection, many different initiatives have demonstrated that open access is economically viable, gives readers tremendous power to discover and utilize relevant literature, and gives authors and their work broad and measurable new visibility, readership, and impact. To secure these benefits for all, we call on all interested institutions and individuals to help open access to the full breadth of this literature and remove the barriers, especially the price barrier, that stand in the way. The more we join in efforts to advance this goal, the sooner we will all enjoy the benefits of open access.
The literature that should be freely accessible online is that which academics give to the world without expectation of payment. This category primarily includes peer-reviewed journal articles, but also includes unreviewed preprints that they may wish to post online for comment or to inform colleagues about important research findings. There are many levels and types of broader and easier access to this literature. By "open access" to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, allowing any user to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full text 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 inherent in access to the internet itself. The only constraints on reproduction and distribution, and the sole role of 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.
While peer-reviewed journal literature should be accessible online at no cost to readers, its production costs are not free. However, experiments have shown that the overall cost of providing open access to this literature is significantly lower than the costs of traditional forms of distribution. With the opportunity to save money and expand the scope of distribution at the same time, there is now a strong incentive for professional associations, universities, libraries, foundations, and others to embrace open access as a means to advance their missions. Achieving open access will require new cost-recovery models and financing mechanisms, but the significantly lower overall cost of dissemination is reason to believe that the goal is achievable and not merely preferable or utopian.
To achieve open access to scholarly journal literature, we recommend two complementary strategies.
I. Self-Archiving: First, academics need the tools and support to deposit refereed journal articles in open electronic archives, a practice commonly called self-archiving. When these archives conform to standards established by the Open Archives Initiative, search engines and other tools can treat the separate archives as a single entity. Users then do not need to know which archives exist or where they are located to find and utilize the content.
II. Open Access Journals: Second, academics need the means to launch a new generation of journals committed to open access, and to assist existing journals that choose to transition to open access. Because journal articles must be disseminated as widely as possible, these new journals will no longer use copyright to restrict access and use of the material they publish. Instead, they will use copyright and other tools to ensure permanent open access to all articles they publish. Because price is a barrier to access, these new journals will not charge subscription or access fees, and will instead turn to other methods to cover their expenses. Many alternative funding sources exist for this purpose, including foundations and governments that fund research, universities and laboratories that employ researchers, endowments established by disciplines or institutions, supporters of open access causes, profits from additional sales of foundational texts, funds freed up by the demise or cancellation of journals that charge subscription or traditional access fees, or even donations from researchers themselves. There is no need to favor one of these solutions over the other for all disciplines or countries, and there is no need to stop exploring creative alternatives.
Open access to peer-reviewed journal literature is the goal. Self-archiving (I.) and a new generation of open access journals (II.) are ways to achieve this goal. Both are not only direct and effective means to achieve this goal, but they are also accessible to academics themselves, immediately, and do not require waiting for market-driven or legislative changes. While we support the two strategies just outlined, we also encourage experimentation with further ways to transition from current dissemination methods to open access. Flexibility, experimentation, and adaptation to local circumstances are the best ways to ensure that progress in various settings will be rapid, secure, and long-lasting.
The Open Society Institute, a network of foundations founded by philanthropist George Soros, is committed to providing initial support and funding to achieve this goal. The Institute will use its resources and influence to expand and promote institutional self-archiving, launch new open access journals, and help the open access journal system become economically self-sustaining. While the Open Society Institute has significant commitment and resources, this initiative desperately needs the support of other organizations to contribute their efforts and resources.
We invite governments, universities, libraries, journal editors, publishers, foundations, learned societies, professional associations, and individual scholars who share our vision to join us in the task of removing barriers to open access and building a future where research and education in every part of the world are freer to flourish.
February 14, 2002
Budapest, Hungaria
Leslie Chan: Bioline International
Darius Cuplinskas: Director, Information Program, Open Society Institute
Michael Eisen: Public Library of Science
Fred Friend: Director Scholarly Communication, University College London
Yana Genova: Next Page Foundation
Jean-Claude Guédon: University of Montreal
Melissa Hagemann: Program Officer, Information Program, Open Society Institute
Stevan Harnad: Professor of Cognitive Science, University of Southampton, Universite du Quebec a Montreal
Rick Johnson: Director, Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC)
Rima Kupryte: Open Society Institute
Manfredi La Manna: Electronic Society for Social Scientists
István Rév: Open Society Institute, Open Society Archives
Monika Segbert: eIFL Project consultant
Sidnei de Souza: Informatics Director at CRIA, Bioline International
Peter Suber: Professor of Philosophy, Earlham College & The Free Online Scholarship Newsletter
Jan Velterop: Publisher, BioMed Central
