The following is a timeline of the international
movement for
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 ...
to
scholarly communication
Scholarly communication involves the creation, publication, dissemination and discovery of academic research, primarily in peer-reviewed journals and books. It is “the system through which research and other scholarly writings are created, evalu ...
.
1940s-1990s
* 1942
** American sociologist
Robert King Merton
Robert King Merton (born Meyer Robert Schkolnick; July 4, 1910 – February 23, 2003) was an American sociologist who is considered a founding father of modern sociology, and a major contributor to the subfield of criminology. He served as t ...
declares: "Each researcher must contribute to the 'common pot' and give up intellectual property rights to allow knowledge to move forward."
* 1971
** "World's first online digital library is launched,
Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg (PG) is a Virtual volunteering, volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, as well as to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks."
It was founded in 1971 by American writer Michael S. Hart and is the ...
."
* 1987
**
Syracuse University
Syracuse University (informally 'Cuse or SU) is a Private university, private research university in Syracuse, New York. Established in 1870 with roots in the Methodist Episcopal Church, the university has been nonsectarian since 1920. Locate ...
in the US issues one of the world's first
open access journals
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 ...
, ''New Horizons in Adult Education'' ().
* 1991
** 14 August:
ArXiv
arXiv (pronounced "archive"—the X represents the Greek letter chi ⟨χ⟩) is an open-access repository of electronic preprints and postprints (known as e-prints) approved for posting after moderation, but not peer review. It consists of ...
repository of physics research papers established at
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos National Laboratory (often shortened as Los Alamos and LANL) is one of the sixteen research and development laboratories of the United States Department of Energy (DOE), located a short distance northwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico, ...
in the US.
* 1994
** 27 June:
Stevan Harnad posts a "
Subversive Proposal" for authors to archive their articles for free for everyone online.
* 1998
** Brazil-based
SciELO (Scientific Electronic Library Online) launched.
**
Public Knowledge Project
The Public Knowledge Project (PKP) is a non-profit research initiative that is focused on the importance of making the results of publicly funded research freely available through open access policies, and on developing strategies for making th ...
founded in Canada.
**
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 ...
founded in North America.
* 1999
** October:
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 t ...
on
interoperability
Interoperability is a characteristic of a product or system to work with other products or systems. While the term was initially defined for information technology or systems engineering services to allow for information exchange, a broader defi ...
standards holds its first meeting, in New Mexico, US.
2000s
* 2000
**
BioMed Central
BioMed Central (BMC) is a United Kingdom-based, for-profit scientific open access publisher that produces over 250 scientific journals. All its journals are published online only. BioMed Central describes itself as the first and largest open a ...
publisher established.
* 2001
** 15 January:
Creative Commons
Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...
founded in the United States.
**
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 launc ...
publisher active.
**
Open Journal Systems
Open Journal Systems, also known as OJS, is a free software for the management of peer-reviewed academic journals, created by the Public Knowledge Project, and released under the GNU General Public License.
History
Open Journal Systems (OJS ...
free software published.
**
SPARC Europe
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 ...
established to promote open access in Europe.
* 2002
** 14 February:
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 conference convened in Budapest by the Open ...
statement issued.
** 28 June: US-based
OAIster
OAIster is an online combined bibliographic catalogue of open access material aggregated using OAI-PMH.
It began at the University of Michigan in 2002 funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and with the purpose of establishing ...
catalog begins.
* 2003
** 11 April:
Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing formed.
** 22 October:
published.
** 25 December:
Institutional Self-Archiving Policy Registry launched (later called ROARMAP).
**
Redalyc (Red de Revistas Científicas de América Latina y El Caribe, España y Portugal) established in Mexico.
* 2004
** UK
Digital Curation Centre
The Digital Curation Centre (DCC) was established to help solve the extensive challenges of digital preservation and digital curation and to lead research, development, advice, and support services for higher education institutions in the Unite ...
founded.
**
Bielefeld Academic Search Engine launched by
Bielefeld University
Bielefeld University (german: Universität Bielefeld) is a university in Bielefeld, Germany. Founded in 1969, it is one of the country's newer universities, and considers itself a "reform" university, following a different style of organization ...
, Germany.
** Publisher
Springer
Springer or springers may refer to:
Publishers
* Springer Science+Business Media, aka Springer International Publishing, a worldwide publishing group founded in 1842 in Germany formerly known as Springer-Verlag.
** Springer Nature, a multinationa ...
begins "
hybrid
Hybrid may refer to:
Science
* Hybrid (biology), an offspring resulting from cross-breeding
** Hybrid grape, grape varieties produced by cross-breeding two ''Vitis'' species
** Hybridity, the property of a hybrid plant which is a union of two dif ...
option 'Open Choice' for their full portfolio of over 1,000 subscription journals."
** 30 January:
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD; french: Organisation de coopération et de développement économiques, ''OCDE'') is an intergovernmental organization, intergovernmental organisation with 38 member countries ...
issues "Declaration on Access to Research Data from Public Funding."
* 2005
**
Directory of Open Access Repositories
OpenDOAR: Directory of Open Access Repositories is a UK-based website that lists open access repositories (including academic ones). It is searchable by locale, content, and other measures. The service does not require complete repository detail ...
begins publication.
* 2007
**
European Research Council
The European Research Council (ERC) is a public body for funding of scientific and technological research conducted within the European Union (EU). Established by the European Commission in 2007, the ERC is composed of an independent Scientific ...
issues "its first Scientific Council Guidelines for open access."
* 2008
**
Durham Statement on Open Access to Legal Scholarship written.
** 7 April: United States
National Institutes of Health Public Access Policy effected.
* 2009
** 12 January: European Commission-funded
OpenAIRE
The Framework Programmes for Research and Technological Development, also called Framework Programmes or abbreviated FP1 to FP9, are funding programmes created by the European Union/European Commission to support and foster research in the Europea ...
project begins, supporting implementation of open access in Europe.
**
Confederation of Open Access Repositories
A confederation (also known as a confederacy or league) is a union of sovereign groups or states united for purposes of common action. Usually created by a treaty, confederations of states tend to be established for dealing with critical issu ...
founded.
2010s
* 2010
** "
Beall's list
Beall's List was a prominent list of predatory open-access publishers that was maintained by University of Colorado librarian Jeffrey Beall on his blog ''Scholarly Open Access''. The list aimed to document open-access publishers who did not per ...
" of
predatory open access publishers
Predatory publishing, also write-only publishing or deceptive publishing, is an exploitative academic publishing business model that involves charging publication fees to authors without checking articles for quality and legitimacy, and withou ...
begins circulating.
* 2011
** 20 January:
#icanhazPDF begins on Twitter.
** 5 September:
Sci-Hub launched by
Alexandra Elbakyan
Alexandra Asanovna Elbakyan (russian: Алекса́ндра Аса́новна Элбакя́н, born 6 November 1988) is a Kazakhstani computer programmer and creator of the website Sci-Hub, which provides free access to research papers with ...
.
** 16 December: United States
Research Works Act
The Research Works Act, 102 H.R. 3699, was a bill that was introduced in the United States House of Representatives at the 112th United States Congress on December 16, 2011, by Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA) and co-sponsored by Carolyn B. Mal ...
bill introduced.
** UK-based
CORE
Core or cores may refer to:
Science and technology
* Core (anatomy), everything except the appendages
* Core (manufacturing), used in casting and molding
* Core (optical fiber), the signal-carrying portion of an optical fiber
* Core, the centra ...
(COnnecting REpositories) aggregation service founded.
* 2012
**
Knowledge Unlatched
Knowledge Unlatched (KU) is an Open Access service provider registered as a for-profit GmbH in Berlin, Germany, and owned by multinational commercial publishing company Wiley as of December 2021. It offers a crowdfunding model to support a variet ...
established.
** Pasteur4OA (Open Access Policy Alignment Strategies for European Union Research) begins.
**
The Cost of Knowledge
The Cost of Knowledge is a protest by academics against the business practices of academic journal publisher Elsevier. Among the reasons for the protests were a call for lower prices for journals and to promote increased open access to informat ...
protest begins against high prices charged by large publisher
Elsevier
Elsevier () is a Dutch academic publishing company specializing in scientific, technical, and medical content. Its products include journals such as ''The Lancet'', ''Cell'', the ScienceDirect collection of electronic journals, '' Trends'', th ...
.
** 22 October: Brussels Declaration signed, on
open access to Belgian publicly funded research.
* 2013
**
PeerJ
''PeerJ'' is an open access peer-reviewed scientific mega journal covering research in the biological and medical sciences. It is published by a company of the same name that was co-founded by CEO Jason Hoyt (formerly at Mendeley) and publisher ...
megajournal begins publication.
**
Registry of Research Data Repositories
The Registry of Research Data Repositories (re3data.org) is an open science tool that offers researchers, funding organizations, libraries and publishers an overview of existing international repositories for research data.
Background
re3da ...
begins operating.
** 4 October: "
Who's Afraid of Peer Review?
"Who's Afraid of Peer Review?" is an article written by ''Science'' correspondent John Bohannon that describes his investigation of peer review among fee-charging open-access journals. Between January and August 2013, Bohannon submitted fake sc ...
" published in ''
Science
Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...
''.
* 2014
** FOSTER Project (Facilitate Open Science Training for European Research) begins.
* 2016
** 7 March
Open Data Button(
browser extension
A browser extension is a small software module for customizing a web browser. Browsers typically allow a variety of extensions, including user interface modifications, cookie management, ad blocking, and the custom scripting and styling of web p ...
) launched.
* 2017
** April
UnpayWall Button(
Browser extension
A browser extension is a small software module for customizing a web browser. Browsers typically allow a variety of extensions, including user interface modifications, cookie management, ad blocking, and the custom scripting and styling of web p ...
) launched (90 million articles are indexed)
** 10 October
Jussieu Callstatement issued
** Plug-in search tool Canary Haz launched to enable access to PDF versions of articles (later renamed
Kopernio.com).
See also
*
History of open access
*
Open access journal: historyDeclarations in support of OA*
Access to Knowledge movement
The Access to Knowledge (A2K) movement is a loose collection of civil society groups, governments, and individuals converging on the idea that access to knowledge should be linked to fundamental principles of justice, freedom, and economic developm ...
References
Further reading
*
* . (Timeline)
*
External links
* (Includes timeline)
* . Also:
Milestones (News feed)
* Compilation of
Peter Suber's contributions to the history of open access, 1992–present.
* This timeline wa
created and initially maintainedby
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 ...
, who crowd-sourced it in February 2009 by moving it to th
Open Access Directory
{{Open access navbox
Academic publishing
Open access movement timeline
Electronic publishing
Scholarly communication
Free culture movement