The Global Open Access List (GOAL), until January 2012 the American Scientist Open Access Forum, is the longest-standing online discussion forum on

Open Access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 definition), or libre op ...

(free online access to

peer-review Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work (peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer review ...

ed research). It was created by the

American Scientist __NOTOC__ ''American Scientist'' (informally abbreviated ''AmSci'') is an American bimonthly science and technology magazine published since 1913 by Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society. In the beginning of 2000s the headquarters was in New ...

, which is published by Sigma Xi, in September 1998, before the term "Open Access" (OA) was coined, and it was originally called the "September98-Forum." Its first focus was an articleWalker, T.J. (1998) Free Internet Access to Traditional Journals
''American Scientist'' 86(5) 463-71 published in

in which Thomas J Walker of the

University of Florida The University of Florida (Florida or UF) is a public land-grant research university in Gainesville, Florida. It is a senior member of the State University System of Florida, traces its origins to 1853, and has operated continuously on its ...

proposed that journals should furnish free online access out of the fees authors pay them to purchase reprints.

Stevan Harnad Stevan Robert Harnad (Hernád István Róbert, Hesslein István, born June 2, 1945, Budapest) is a Hungarian-born cognitive scientist based in Montreal, Canada. Education Harnad was born in Budapest, Hungary. He did his undergraduate work at McG ...

, who had in 1994 made the

Subversive Proposal The "Subversive Proposal" was an Internet posting by Stevan Harnad on June 27 1994 (presented at the 1994 Network Services Conference in London ) calling on all authors of "esoteric" research writings to archive their articles for free for everyone ...

that all researchers should

self archive Self-archiving is the act of (the author's) depositing a free copy of an electronic document online in order to provide open access to it. The term usually refers to the self-archiving of peer-reviewed research journal and conference articles, ...

their peer-reviewed research, was invited to moderate the forum, which was not expected to last more than a few months. It continued to grow in size and influence across the years and is still the site where most of the main developments in OA are first mooted, including self-archiving,

institutional repositories An institutional repository is an archive for collecting, preserving, and disseminating digital copies of the intellectual output of an institution, particularly a research institution. Academics also utilize their IRs for archiving published work ...

, citation impact, research performance metrics, publishing reform, copyright reform, open access journals, and open access mandates.

External links

American Scientist Open Access Forum
Official Site
Global Open Access List
Official Site

References

{{authority control Open access projects Publishing organizations Communication Research Archives in the United States 1998 establishments in the United States