Participants_at_Budapest_meeting,_December_1,_2001

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 conference convened in

Budapest Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population ...

by the

Open Society Institute Open Society Foundations (OSF), formerly the Open Society Institute, is a grantmaking network founded and chaired by business magnate George Soros. Open Society Foundations financially supports civil society groups around the world, with a st ...

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 has been recognised as one of the major defining events of the

open access movement 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 o ...

. As of 2021, the text of the initiative had been translated to 13 languages. On the 10th anniversary of the initiative in 2012, the ends and means of the original initiative were reaffirmed and supplemented with a set of concrete recommendations for achieving open access in the next 10 years.

Content

Initiative

The opening sentence of the Budapest Open Access Initiative encapsulates what the open access movement is all about, and what its potential is:

Definition

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

Strategy and funding

As of 2001, the BOAI has recommended two complementary strategies in order to achieve open access to scientific literature. First, scholars should follow the practice of

self-archiving 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, as ...

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 The Open Archives Initiative (OAI) was an informal organization, in the circle around the colleagues Herbert Van de Sompel, Carl Lagoze, Michael L. Nelson and Simeon Warner, to develop and apply technical interoperability standards for archives to ...

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

Signatories

The 16 original signatories of the Budapest Open Access Initiative included some of the world's early leaders in the open access movement: * Leslie Chan of Bioline International * Darius Cuplinskas, Melissa Hagemann, Rima Kupryte of

* István Rév, Open Society Institute, Open Society Archives *

Michael Eisen Michael Bruce Eisen (born April 13, 1967) is an American computational biologist and the editor-in-chief of the journal eLife. He is a professor of genetics, genomics and development at University of California, Berkeley. He is a leading advocate o ...

of the

Public Library of Science PLOS (for Public Library of Science; PLoS until 2012 ) is a nonprofit publisher of open-access journals in science, technology, and medicine and other scientific literature, under an open-content license. It was founded in 2000 and laun ...

* Fred Friend († April 23, 2014) of

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

* Yana Genova of Next Page Foundation * Jean-Claude Guédon of the

Université de Montréal The Université de Montréal (UdeM; ; translates to University of Montreal) is a French-language public research university in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The university's main campus is located in the Côte-des-Neiges neighborhood of Côte- ...

* Stevan Harnad of the

University of Southampton , mottoeng = The Heights Yield to Endeavour , type = Public research university , established = 1862 – Hartley Institution1902 – Hartley University College1913 – Southampton University Coll ...

Université du Québec à Montréal The Université du Québec à Montréal (English: University of Quebec in Montreal), also known as UQAM, is a French-language public university based in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is the largest constituent element of the Université du Qué ...

* Rick Johnson of the

Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) is an international alliance of academic and research libraries developed by the Association of Research Libraries in 1998 which promotes open access to scholarship. The coalition c ...

(SPARC) * Manfredi La Manna of the Electronic Society for Social Scientists * Monika Segbert, Electronic Information for Libraries (EIFL) Project consultant * Sidnei de Souza, Informatics Director at

CRIA A ''cria'' (pronounced ) is a juvenile llama, alpaca, vicuña, or guanaco. Etymology The term comes from the Spanish word cría, meaning "baby". Its false cognate in English, ''crya'' (pronounced ), was coined by British sailors who explored C ...

, Bioline International *

Peter Suber Peter Dain Suber (born November 8, 1951) is a philosopher specializing in the philosophy of law and open access to knowledge. He is a Senior Researcher at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, Director of the Harvard Office for Scholarl ...

, Professor of Philosophy,

Earlham College Earlham College is a private liberal arts college in Richmond, Indiana. The college was established in 1847 by the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) and has a strong focus on Quaker values such as integrity, a commitment to peace and social ...

and The Free Online Scholarship Newsletter * Jan Velterop of BioMed Central In February 2002, the signatories released BOAI in a version that could be signed by the public. , more than 5,932 individuals and 837 organizations had signed it.

10th anniversary

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.

References

External links

Budapest Open Access Initiative FAQ

by

Openarchives.eu – The European Guide to OAI-PMH Digital Repositories in the World
{{Authority control Open access statements Access to Knowledge movement 2001 documents