Open-access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. What makes it possible is the internet and the consent of the author or copyright-holder.
"Academic literature should be freely available: developing countries need access; part time ... thinkers ... journalists and the public can benefit; ... you’ve already paid for much of this stuff with your taxes ... important new ideas from humanity"
The Budapest Open Access Initiative arises from a small but lively meeting convened in Budapest by the Open Society Institute (OSI) on December 1-2, 2001. The purpose of the meeting was to accelerate progress in the international effort to make research articles in all academic fields freely available on the internet. The participants represented many points of view, many academic disciplines, and many nations, and had experience with many of the ongoing initiatives that make up the open access movement. In Budapest they explored how the separate initiatives could work together to achieve broader, deeper, and faster success. They explored the most effective and affordable strategies for serving the interests of research, researchers, and the institutions and societies that support research. Finally, they explored how OSI and other foundations could use their resources most productively to aid the transition to open access and to make open-access publishing economically self-sustaining. The result is the Budapest Open Access Initiative. It is at once a statement of principle, a statement of strategy, and a statement of commitment.
DSpace is an open-source digital archiving system designed by MIT Libraries and Hewlett Packard to capture, manage and share research in digital formats.
Leading academics in fields as diverse as biology, computer science, and law have spoken out and taken action for “open access” which includes novel publishing models that do not set up barriers to access, models where neither Wiley nor Elsevier nor e
Subscription models make publishers insist on controlling access to research they didn't perform, write up, or fund. They act like a midwives who insist on keeping (or hiding, or performing surgery on) other folks' babies.