The Open Access Movement
Open Access Declarations
The first Open Access Declaration took place in 1964: The Declaration of Helsinki
Read here for more information about the following OA Declarations thereafter
Preface
The Internet has fundamentally changed the practical and economic realities of distributing scientific knowledge and cultural heritage. For the first time ever, the Internet now offers the chance to constitute a global and interactive representation of human knowledge, including cultural heritage and the guarantee of worldwide access.
We, the undersigned, feel obliged to address the challenges of the Internet as an emerging functional medium for distributing knowledge. Obviously, these developments will be able to significantly modify the nature of scientific publishing as well as the existing system of quality assurance.
In accordance with the spirit of the Declaration of the Budapest Open Access Initiative, the ECHO Charter and the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing, we have drafted the Berlin Declaration to promote the Internet as a functional instrument for a global scientific knowledge base and human reflection and to specify measures which research policy makers, research institutions, funding agencies, libraries, archives and museums need to consider."
Rhodes University joined the list of signatories to the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge. Dr Peter Clayton, DVC, signed the Declaration during a seminar on Open Access on Thursday, 24 October 2013.
Dr Peter Clayton (Deputy Vice Chancellor) and Ms Ujala Satgoor (Director: Library Services)
The NRF is an independent statutory body established through the National Research Foundation Act (Act No 23 of 1998), following a system-wide review conducted for the Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology (DACST). The new entity incorporated the functions of the research funding agencies that were previously servicing various sections of the research community, namely the former Centre for Science Development (CSD) of the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) and the former Foundation for Research Development (FRD) that included several National Research Facilities.
NRF Statement
Statement on Open Access to Research Publications from the National Research Foundation (NRF)-Funded Research
19 January 2015
"SPARC is a non-profit advocacy organization that supports systems for research and education that are open by default and equitable by design. We believe everyone should be able to access and contribute to the knowledge that shapes our world."
SPARC. International Open Access Week
International Open Access Week is an opportunity for advocates to engage their communities to teach them about the benefits of Open Access, share what they’ve learned with colleagues, and help inspire wider participation in making open the new norm in research.
UNESCO is the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. It seeks to build peace through international cooperation in education, sciences and culture. UNESCO's programmes contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals defined in the 2030 Agenda, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2015.
Wellcome exists to improve health by helping great ideas to thrive. Wellcome supports researchers, takes on big health challenges, campaigns for better science, and helps everyone get involved with science and health research.
The Wellcome Trust extends open access policy to include scholarly monographs and book chapters
Wellcome Trust extends open access policy to include scholarly monographs and book chapters 30 May 2013. The Wellcome Trust today announces that it is to extend its open access policy to include all scholarly monographs and book chapters written by its grantholders as part of their Trust-funded research.
Simon Chaplin, Head of the Wellcome Library, says: "We are deeply committed to ensuring that the published outputs of our funded research are made freely available. We recognise that a significant amount of scholarly work is published in monographs and book chapters and we want to ensure that these, too, reach as wide an audience as possible. This will allow the knowledge to be built upon in order to maximise health and public benefit, and foster a richer research culture."
Plan S
Plan S is an initiative for Open Access publishing that was launched in September 2018. The plan is supported by cOAlition S, an international consortium of research funding and performing organisations. Plan S requires that, from 2021, scientific publications that result from research funded by public grants must be published in compliant Open Access journals or platforms.
On 4 September 2018, a group of national research funding organisations, with the support of the European Commission and the European Research Council (ERC), announced the launch of cOAlition S, an initiative to make full and immediate Open Access to research publications a reality. It is built around Plan S, which consists of one target and 10 principles.
cOAlition S signals the commitment to implement the necessary measures to fulfil its main principle:
“With effect from 2021, all scholarly publications on the results from research funded by public or private grants provided by national, regional and international research councils and funding bodies, must be published in Open Access Journals, on Open Access Platforms, or made immediately available through Open Access Repositories without embargo.”
Plan S services
A secure, free-of-charge service that enables libraries, library consortia, and funders to better understand if the fees they pay are commensurate with the publication services delivered. Publishers provide information in a standard format, including information about the publication frequency, the peer review process, times from submission to acceptance, the range of list prices for APCs and subscriptions and more.
The JCT is a web-based tool which provides clear advice to researchers on how they can comply with their funder’s Plan S-aligned Open Access policy when seeking to publish in their chosen journal.
Using the JCT is simple: the user supplies the name of their preferred journal and then selects their cOAlition S Organisation and the institution they are affiliated with. The combination of these data instantaneously yields a result that allows the user to see how their choice of journal is compliant with Plan S: via fully open access journals and platforms, through self-archiving (either via the publishers’ own policy or the Rights Retention Strategy (RRS) or through Transformative Arrangements.
The Open Access Directory (OAD) is a compendium of simple factual lists about open access (OA) to science and scholarship, maintained by the OA community at large. By bringing many OA-related lists together in one place, OAD makes it easier for everyone to discover them, use them for reference, and update them. The easier they are to maintain and discover, the more effectively they can spread useful, accurate information about OA. To see what we have, browse the table of contents below, browse the table of categories, or use the search box in near the upper right corner. To help the cause, just register and start editing. If you have any questions, see our FAQs or drop us a line.