Swiss scientific organisations have agreed to allow open access to their research information for all interested parties, free of charge.
The joint signing of the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities will help break down barriers for accessing scientific knowledge. The declaration, launched in 2003, is the response from the science world to the new information-sharing opportunities offered by the Internet, a statement from the Swiss National Science Foundation said on Tuesday.
The National Science Foundation, along with four other organisations, is one of the signatories of the Berlin Declaration.
Open-access publishing allows readers to access, copy, and distribute research papers freely, subject to proper attribution of authorship.
In treating science as a public asset for researchers, the objective is to "return science to the scientists" and stimulate new research ideas.
"We want to open up our archives to a wider public because as taxpayers, they fund our work," Andreas Dick of the National Science Foundation told swissinfo.
"Researchers will put whatever they have published online, making it easily available and fast-tracking the way from the journal to the public," he added.
The Conference of Swiss University Libraries has already been canvassing for the widespread signing of the declaration for some time, mainly on cost-saving grounds.
Open-access systems will offer an alternative to the rapid increase in prices for subscriptions to commercial magazines from scientific publishers. In all, around 2.5 million articles are published every year in 24,000 scientific magazines....In October 2003, the Berlin Declaration issued an open invitation to governments, universities, research institutions, funding agencies, foundations, libraries, museums, archives, learned societies and professional associations to sign up to the principle of open access.
Also see today's press release from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF), one of the new signatories to the Berlin Declaration.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 2/07/2006 07:47:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
