Open Access to Knowledge

Open Sesame!... Knowledge is the Key!

Once upon a time, there were a group of scholars and researchers who set out to make the world a better place by making new discoveries, developing new theories, and advancing existing knowledge. They were not interested in being famous or making lots of money. They done what they done for the love of learning and sharing. Unfortunately, getting their work out there was not an easy task. They had to go through publishing companies who agreed to put their work out there for others to access. However, these publishing companies had a different agenda. Their aim was to make money. Though they do not do much to add value to the research they publish, they make a huge profit which, ultimately, benefits only them. Although they kept their word about putting the research "out there", they charged fee upon fee for the access and reuse of the research they now owned. Since most publishing companies own all rights to the research, they alone made the rules and researchers had no say. This began to trouble researchers as it thwarted their initial intentions and goals.

As these complaints continued to pour in from researchers and students, and as the internet continued to grow and make things more widely available to anyone and everyone, the cry of the people were heard and a new movement began! The movement of Open Access! This movement had two leading fronts, namely:

Gratis and Libre

Gratis who agreed that people should not have to pay to access research, but should be able to access the information freely as was the intentions of the researchers who produced the research. However, gratis did not give people freedom to use the research as they please, but maintained restrictions in terms of distribution, making copies, and modifying the research in anyway beyond that of fair use. Libre on the other hand, felt that research should not only be free to access, but also took it a step further by granting people additional rights and privileges by applying the Creative Commons license so that people could reuse and remix the research as required and the dreams of the researchers could be fulfilled, by sharing knowledge for the good of all the world!

Benefits of Open Access

Open Access also holds a number of benefits for libraries, institutions and students, where for libraries, resources will be accessed more often, institutions will have quality, credible information available to students, and students will have unlimited access to reliable research and resources at no cost to them.

BBB...Leaders of the Open Access Movement

Budapest OA Initiative: Literature that should be free to access should be those used by scholars not seeking payment for their contributions, including peer-reviewed journal articles as well as any un-reviewed pe-prints they wish to share online. By making this open access, it means that anyone wishing to use the research would be free of any technical, legal, and financial barriers that may previously have hindered them. The only limits remaining would be that granting authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be acknowledged and cited.

Budapest also proposed two methods of achieving open access namely:

1. Self-archiving
2. Open Access Journals

Bethesda Statement on OA Publishing: Extending on the definition of OA, some key points raised in this statement are that authors and copyright holders grant users free, irrevocable, worldwide perpetual rights to access, copy, use and distribute the work in a digital medium for any legal purposes, provided, again, that authors be correctly acknowledged and cited when their work is used.

Another point states that a complete version of all research and supplementary materials be deposited in at least one online repository, in a standard electronic format as soon as it published. The repositort should be controlled by a tertiary institution, governmental agency or well established organisation.

Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Science and Humanities: There are minor differences between the Berlin Declaration and Bethesda Statement, but they essentially say the same thing. 

To implement the Berlin Declaration at institutions a policy should be implemented

1. Requiring researchers to deposit a copy of all published articles in an open access repository.
2. Encouraging their researchers to publish research articles in suitable open access journals, where possible.

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