| Budapest Open Access Initiative An old tradition and a new technology have converged to make possible an unprecedented public good . The old tradition is the willingness of scientists and scholars to publish the fruits of their research in scholarly journals without payment , for the sake of inquiry and knowledge . The new technology is the internet . The public good they make possible is the world-wide electronic distribution of the peer-reviewed journal literature and completely free and unrestricted access to it by all scientists , scholars , teachers , students , and other curious minds . Removing access barriers to this literature will accelerate research , enrich education , share the learning of the rich with the poor and the poor with the rich , make this literature as useful as it can be , and lay the foundation for uniting humanity in a common intellectual conversation and quest for knowledge . For various reasons , this kind of free and unrestricted online availability , which we will call open access , has so far been limited to small portions of the journal literature . But even in these limited collections , many different initiatives have shown that open access is economically feasible , that it gives readers extraordinary power to find and make use of relevant literature , and that it gives authors and their works vast and measurable new visibility , readership , and impact . To secure these benefits for all , we call on all interested institutions and individuals to help open up access to the rest of this literature and remove the barriers , especially the price barriers , that stand in the way . The more who join the effort to advance this cause , the sooner we will all enjoy the benefits of open access . The literature that should be freely accessible online is that which scholars give to the world without expectation of payment . Primarily , this category encompasses their peer-reviewed journal articles , but it also includes any unreviewed preprints that they might wish to put online for comment or to alert colleagues to important research findings . There are many degrees and kinds of wider and easier access to this literature . By " open access " to this literature , we mean its free availability on the public internet , permitting any users to read , download , copy , distribute , print , search , or link to the full texts of these articles , crawl them for indexing , pass them as data to software , or use them for any other lawful purpose , without financial , legal , or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself . The only constraint on reproduction and distribution , and the only role for copyright in this domain , should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited . While the peer-reviewed journal literature should be accessible online without cost to readers , it is not costless to produce . However , experiments show that the overall costs of providing open access to this literature are far lower than the costs of traditional forms of dissemination . With such an opportunity to save money and expand the scope of dissemination at the same time , there is today a strong incentive for professional associations , universities , libraries , foundations , and others to embrace open access as a means of advancing their missions . Achieving open access will require new cost recovery models and financing mechanisms , but the significantly lower overall cost of dissemination is a reason to be confident that the goal is attainable and not merely preferable or utopian . To achieve open access to scholarly journal literature , we recommend two complementary strategies . I. Self-Archiving : First , scholars need the tools and assistance to deposit their refereed journal articles in open electronic archives , a practice commonly called , self-archiving . When these archives conform to standards created by the Open Archives Initiative , then search engines and other tools can treat the separate archives as one . Users then need not know which archives exist or where they are located in order to find and make use of their contents . II . Open-access Journals : Second , scholars need the means to launch a new generation of journals committed to open access , and to help existing journals that elect to make the transition to open access . Because journal articles should be disseminated as widely as possible , these new journals will no longer invoke copyright to restrict access to and use of the material they publish . Instead they will use copyright and other tools to ensure permanent open access to all the articles they publish . Because price is a barrier to access , these new journals will not charge subscription or access fees , and will turn to other methods for covering their expenses . There are many alternative sources of funds for this purpose , including the foundations and governments that fund research , the universities and laboratories that employ researchers , endowments set up by discipline or institution , friends of the cause of open access , profits from the sale of add-ons to the basic texts , funds freed up by the demise or cancellation of journals charging traditional subscription or access fees , or even contributions from the researchers themselves . There is no need to favor one of these solutions over the others for all disciplines or nations , and no need to stop looking for other , creative alternatives . Open access to peer-reviewed journal literature is the goal . Self-archiving ( I. ) and a new generation of open-access journals ( II . ) are the ways to attain this goal . They are not only direct and effective means to this end , they are within the reach of scholars themselves , immediately , and need not wait on changes brought about by markets or legislation . While we endorse the two strategies just outlined , we also encourage experimentation with further ways to make the transition from the present methods of dissemination to open access . Flexibility , experimentation , and adaptation to local circumstances are the best ways to assure that progress in diverse settings will be rapid , secure , and long-lived . The Open Society Institute , the foundation network founded by philanthropist George Soros , is committed to providing initial help and funding to realize this goal . It will use its resources and influence to extend and promote institutional self-archiving , to launch new open-access journals , and to help an open-access journal system become economically self-sustaining . While the Open Society Institute 's commitment and resources are substantial , this initiative is very much in need of other organizations to lend their effort and resources . We invite governments , universities , libraries , journal editors , publishers , foundations , learned societies , professional associations , and individual scholars who share our vision to join us in the task of removing the barriers to open access and building a future in which research and education in every part of the world are that much more free to flourish . February 14 , 2002 Budapest , Hungary |