The following is a timeline of the international

movement Movement may refer to: Generic uses * Movement (clockwork), the internal mechanism of a timepiece * Movement (sign language), a hand movement when signing * Motion, commonly referred to as movement * Movement (music), a division of a larger co ...

for

open access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which nominally copyrightable publications are delivered to readers free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 de ...

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, ev ...

1940s-1990s

* 1942 ** American sociologist Robert King Merton 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 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 oldest digital li ...

." * 1987 **

Syracuse University Syracuse University (informally 'Cuse or SU) is a Private university, private research university in Syracuse, New York, United States. It was established in 1870 with roots in the Methodist Episcopal Church but has been nonsectarian since 1920 ...

in the US issues one of the world's first

open access journals Pulsus Group is a health informatics and digital marketing company and publisher of scientific, technical, and medical literature. It was formed in 1984, primarily to publish peer-reviewed medical journals. Pulsus published 98 hybrid and fu ...

, ''New Horizons in Adult Education'' (). * 1991 ** 14 August:

ArXiv arXiv (pronounced as "archive"—the X represents the Chi (letter), 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 Scholarly pee ...

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 Laboratory, laboratories of the United States Department of Energy National Laboratories, United States Department of Energy ...

in the US. * 1994 ** 27 June:

Stevan Harnad Stevan Robert Harnad (Hernád István Róbert, Hesslein István, born 1945) is a Canadian cognitive scientist based in Montreal. Early life and education Harnad was born in Budapest, Hungary. He did his undergraduate work at McGill University an ...

posts a "

Subversive Proposal The "Subversive Proposal" was an Internet posting by Stevan Harnad on June 27, 1994 (presented at the 1994 Network Services Conference in London) calling on all authors of "esoteric" research writings to archive their articles for free for everyone ...

" for authors to archive their articles for free for everyone online. ** July 1994
Electronic Green Journal (EGJ)
was launched by the University of Idaho Library. Since 2009 it is published by the University of California eScholarship. The EGJ is a peer-reviewed publication devoted to information about international sources on environmental protection, conservation, management of natural resources, and sustainability. * 1998 ** Brazil-based

SciELO SciELO (Scientific Electronic Library Online) is a bibliographic database, digital library, and cooperative electronic publishing model of open access journals. SciELO was created to meet the scientific communication needs of developing countrie ...

(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 thi ...

founded in Canada. **

Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition The scholarly method or scholarship is the body of principles and practices used by scholars and academics to make their claims about their subjects of expertise as valid and trustworthy as possible, and to make them known to the scholarly pu ...

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 ...

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 de ...

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 launched its ...

publisher active. **

Open Journal Systems Open Journal Systems, also known as OJS, is an open source and 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 Journa ...

free software published. ** SPARC Europe 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 Scientific literature, research literature, which was released to the public on February 14, 2002. It arose from a convening in Budape ...

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 establishin ...

catalog begins. * 2003 ** 11 April:

Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing The Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing is a 2003 statement which defines the concept of open access and then supports that concept. Statement On 11 April 2003, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute held a meeting for 24 people to discuss be ...

formed. ** 22 October:

Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities The Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities is an international statement on open access and access to knowledge. It emerged from a conference on open access hosted in the Harnack House in Berlin by the Max P ...

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) The Scientific Information System Redalyc is a bibliographic database and a digital library of Open Access journals, supported by the Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México with the help of numerous other higher education institutions and i ...

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 United ...

founded. **

Bielefeld Academic Search Engine BASE (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine) is a multi-disciplinary search engine to scholarly internet resources, created by Bielefeld University Library in Bielefeld, Germany. It is based on free and open-source software such as Apache Solr and VuF ...

launched by

Bielefeld University Bielefeld University () is a public 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 and teaching than the e ...

, 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 diff ...

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; , OCDE) is an international organization, intergovernmental organization with 38 member countries, founded in 1961 to stimulate economic progress and international trade, wor ...

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 The Durham Statement on Open Access to Legal Scholarship is a public statement related to ensuring the open access of legal information and scholarship. It was written in 2008 by a group of library directors from law schools in the United States. B ...

written. ** 7 April: United States National Institutes of Health Public Access Policy effected. ** July: Aaron Swartz releases the " Guerilla Open Access Manifesto", to send "a strong message against the privatization of knowledge". * 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 Europe ...

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 political union of sovereign 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" of

predatory open access publishers Predatory publishing, also write-only publishing or deceptive publishing, is an exploitative academic publishing business model, where the journal or publisher prioritizes self-interest at the expense of scholarship. It is characterized by misle ...

begins circulating. * 2011 ** 20 January: #icanhazPDF begins on Twitter. ** 5 September:

Sci-Hub Sci-Hub is a library website that provides free access to millions of research papers, regardless of copyright, by bypassing publishers' paywalls in various ways. Unlike Library Genesis, it does not provide access to books. Sci-Hub was found ...

launched by

Alexandra Elbakyan Alexandra Asanovna Elbakyan (, , born 6 November 1988) is a Kazakhstani computer programmer and creator of the website Sci-Hub, which provides free access to research papers without regard for copyright. According to a study published in 2018, S ...

. ** 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. ...

bill introduced. ** UK-based

CORE Core or cores may refer to: Science and technology * Core (anatomy), everything except the appendages * Core (laboratory), a highly specialized shared research resource * Core (manufacturing), used in casting and molding * Core (optical fiber ...

(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 varie ...

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 informati ...

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 (journal), Cell'', the ScienceDirect collection of electronic journals, ...

. ** 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 officially launched in June 2012, started accepting submissions on December 3, 2012, and published its first articles ...

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 data library, repositories for research data. Backg ...

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 s ...

" published in ''

Science Science is a systematic discipline that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the universe. Modern science is typically divided into twoor threemajor branches: the natural sciences, which stu ...

''. * 2014 ** FOSTER Project (Facilitate Open Science Training for European Research) begins. * 2016 ** 7 March
Open Data Button
(

browser extension A browser extension is a software module for customizing a web browser. Browsers typically allow users to install a variety of extensions, including user interface modifications, cookie management, ad blocking, and the custom scripting and st ...

) launched. * 2017 ** April
UnpayWall Button
(

Browser extension A browser extension is a software module for customizing a web browser. Browsers typically allow users to install a variety of extensions, including user interface modifications, cookie management, ad blocking, and the custom scripting and st ...

) launched (90 million articles are indexed) ** 10 October
Jussieu Call
statement issued ** Plug-in search tool Canary Haz launched to enable access to PDF versions of articles (later renamed

Kopernio.com EndNote Click (formerly Kopernio) is a freely available plugin allowing researchers to access papers in subscription-based scientific journals, to which they are subscribed through their higher education libraries, even when the user is off-camp ...

References

Citations

* (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 maintained
by

Peter Suber Peter Dain Suber (born November 8, 1951) is an American 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 fo ...

, who crowd-sourced it in February 2009 by moving it to th
Open Access Directory

External links

Declarations in support of OA

Timeline of the open access movement
at the Open Access Directory since 2009. {{Open access navbox Academic publishing Open access movement timeline Electronic publishing Scholarly communication Free culture movement