Open Access Movement
Open Access
The first definition of open Access is found in the Budapest Initiative for Open Access (February 2002) and the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities (2003). "Open access" to scientific literature means free availability on the public Internet, allowing any user to read, download, copy, distribute, print, query or add a link to the complete text of those articles. The only limitation to use of the document is imposed by moral author rights, as authors maintain control over the integrity of their work and the right to be appropriately acknowledged and cited.
The main benefit of open-access policies is to make research more effective and its results more visible to the rest of the scientific community by eliminating legal, commercial and technological barriers to access to scientific information. It increases and improves visibility of institutions with which the authors are associated, improving their institutional positioning. It favours the impact of publications, and authors and publications receive more citations. Furthermore, open access prevents duplicating effort, promotes technology and knowledge transfer and promotes innovation and collaboration among working groups.
Routes for open-access publishing:
Gold: In open-access journals
Green: Publication in institutional or thematic repositories
International declarations on open access
Declaration de Bethesda. Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing (20 de Junio de 2003).
Declaration de Budapest. Budapest Open Access Initiative(14 de febrero de 2002).
European recommendations and initiatives
Recommendation of the European Commission of 17 July 2012, related to access to scientific information and its preservation (2012/417/UE)
Horizon 2020 Framework Programme (2014-2020), which requires open-access deposit of all peer-reviewed publications generated by projects funded under the programme.
Universities should develop institutional policies and strategies that foster the availability of their quality controlled research results (in the form of research papers and other outputs) for the broadest possible range of users, maximising their visibility, accessibility and scientific impact. The basic approach for achieving this should be the creation of an institutional repository.
University institutional policies should require that their researchers deposit (self-archive) their scientific publications in their institutional repository upon acceptance for publication. Permissible embargoes should apply only to the date of open access provision and not the date of deposit.
University institutional policies should explore also how resources could be found and made available to researchers for author fees to support the emerging "author pays model" of open access.
Some journals OA, no charge, are subsidised and others require payment to the author.
University policies should include copyright in the institutional intellectual property rights (IPR) management. It should be the responsibility of the university to inform their faculty researchers about IPR and copyright management in order to ensure the wider sharing and reuse of the digital research content they have produced. This should include a clear policy on ownership and management of copyright covering scholarly publications and define procedures for ensuring that the institution has the right to use the material produced by its staff for further research, educational and instructional purposes
Initiatives in Spain
2004: CRUE/REBIUN Declaration supporting the electronic open-access model approved by the 12th General Assembly of the REBIUN. "Urges authors, especially those who carry out publically-funded projects, to give priority in sending their papers for publication to those publications which follow the electronic open-access model […] In no case, grant full author rights so they can deposit a copy of their articles in open-access institutional repositories".
Declaration of CRUE [Conference of Rectors of Spanish Universities]-REBIUN [Spanish University Library Network] in support of the open Access model [online]. 2004 [Queried 23 September 2009]. Available in: http://biblioteca.ucm.es/boletin/bibliotecario/01/acceso.pdf
2008: The Community of Madrid was pioneering in requiring that publications derived from its competitively-funded research projects be deposited in their respective open access institutional repositories, requirement which concerns its universities as well as CSIC [Higher Council for Scientific Research institutes located in the Community of Madrid. The three universities which have followed this order are: Rey Juan Carlos, Politécnica de Madrid and Carlos III.
