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Wikipedia / Budapest Open Access Initiative

The Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) is a public statement of principles relating to open access to the research literature, which was released to the public on February 14, 2002. It arose from a convening in Budapest organized by the Open Society Institute on December 1–2, 2001 to promote open access, which at that time was also known as Free Online Scholarship. This small gathering of individuals is recognized as one of the major defining events of the open access movement.

Content

The opening sentence of the BOAI encapsulated the purpose and potential of an open access movement:

Definition

The document contains one of the first and most widely used definitions of open access, which was subsequently reaffirmed, 10 years after it was first published:

Strategy and funding

In 2001, the BOAI recommended two complementary strategies in order to achieve open access to scientific literature. First, scholars should follow the practice of self-archiving which is when authors deposit a copy of their own text to open archives on the internet. Preferably these archives should conform to the standards of the Open Archives Initiative and make it easy for users to find the texts. Second, scholars should launch new online open access journals and help other periodicals to adapt the principles of open access.

10th anniversary update

In 2012 on the 10th anniversary of the original initiative, a new statement was released which reaffirmed the BOAI's definition of open access, its goals, strategies and commitment to make progress. It also contained "the new goal that within the next ten years, OA will become the default method for distributing new peer-reviewed research in every field and country", policy recommendations for universities, research funding agencies, recommendations on choosing the optimal licence (CC-BY), designing open access repository infrastructure, and advocacy for achieving open access.

As of 2021, the text of the initiative had been translated to 13 languages.

20th anniversary recommendations

In recognition of the 20th anniversary of the original declaration, the BOAI2020 Steering Committee released four high-level recommendations alongside a set of subrecommendations.

Impact

Along with the 2003 Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities and 2003 Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing, the Budapest initiative defined open access to research, lay out strategies for achieving this, and began the "open access movement" or "social movement" phase of open access advocacy.

The initiative was sponsored with a US $3 million grant from the Open Society Institute.

Signatories

The 16 original signatories of the Budapest Open Access Initiative included prominent early advocates for open access:

In February 2002, the signatories released BOAI in a version that could be signed by the public. , over 5,900 individuals and 800 organizations had signed it. By 2023, this was over 6800 individuals and 1600 organizations.

See also

References