A little history... Open Access declarations

Dichiarazione di Berlino sull'Open Access

Chronologically, the very first Open Access declaration was the definition issued by the 2002 Open Access initiative in Budapest.

However, the most widly cited is the 2003 Berlin declaration

This declaration is cited as a reference by Plan S and its 10 principles, in cases where CC BY (by Creative Common) cannot be applied.

Establishing open access as a worthwhile procedure ideally requires the active commitment of each and every individual producer of scientific knowledge and holder of cultural heritage. Open access contributions include original scientific research results, raw data and metadata, source materials, digital representations of pictorial and graphical materials and scholarly multimedia material.

Open access contributions must satisfy two conditions:
  • The author(s) and right holder(s) of such contributions grant(s) to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship (community standards will continue to provide the mechanism for enforcement of proper attribution and responsible use of the published work, as they do now), as well as the right to make small numbers of printed copies for their personal use.
  • complete version of the work and all supplemental materials, including a copy of the permission as stated above, in an appropriate standard electronic format is deposited (and thus published) in at least one online repository using suitable technical standards (such as the Open Archive definitions) that is supported and maintained by an academic institution, scholarly society, government agency, or other well-established organization that seeks to enable open access, unrestricted distribution, inter operability, and long-term archiving.
The Berlin Declaration signatories list includes over 600 universities, research centers and foundations.
Other important OA declarations are the Messina declaration (2004) and the Bethesda declaration (2003).


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