Budapest Open Access Initiative
Encyclopedia
The Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) was a conference convened by the Open Society Institute
Open Society Institute
The Open Society Institute , renamed in 2011 to Open Society Foundations, is a private operating and grantmaking foundation started by George Soros, aimed to shape public policy to promote democratic governance, human rights, and economic, legal, and social reform...

 on December 1-2, 2001. This small gathering of individuals is recognised as one of the major historical, and defining, events of the open access movement.

The opening sentence of the Budapest Open Access Initiative encapsulates what the open access movement is all about, and what its potential is: "An old tradition and a new technology have converged to make possible an unprecedented public good." The old tradition is academic scholars giving away the results of their research. Faculty at universities are paid by universities and/or funding agencies to produce research; disseminating the results in peer review
Peer review
Peer review is a process of self-regulation by a profession or a process of evaluation involving qualified individuals within the relevant field. Peer review methods are employed to maintain standards, improve performance and provide credibility...

ed venues is an expectation. Journals do not buy the articles from the authors or pay royalties on sales. The new technology is the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

. Together, these have made it possible from everyone in the world to share knowledge freely and openly.

The 13 original signatories of the Budapest Open Access Initiative included some of the world's early leaders in the open access movement: Leslie Chan of Bioline International; Darius Cuplinskas, Melissa Hagemann, Rima Kupryte and István Rév of Open Society Institute
Open Society Institute
The Open Society Institute , renamed in 2011 to Open Society Foundations, is a private operating and grantmaking foundation started by George Soros, aimed to shape public policy to promote democratic governance, human rights, and economic, legal, and social reform...

; Michael Eisen
Michael Eisen
Michael Eisen is an American biologist. He is currently an Investigator in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Associate Professor of Genetics, Genomics and Development at University of California, Berkeley...

 of the Public Library of Science
Public Library of Science
The Public Library of Science is a nonprofit open-access scientific publishing project aimed at creating a library of open access journals and other scientific literature under an open content license...

; Fred Friend of the University College London
University College London
University College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and the oldest and largest constituent college of the federal University of London...

; Yana Genova of Next Page Foundation; Jean-Claude Guédon
Jean-Claude Guédon
Jean-Claude Guédon is a Quebec-based academic.-Education:In 1960-1, he was an American Field Service exchange student in Kenmore East Senior High School in Tonawanda, New York . He went on to study chemistry at Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York and finally earned a Ph.D...

 of the Université de Montréal
Université de Montréal
The Université de Montréal is a public francophone research university in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It comprises thirteen faculties, more than sixty departments and two affiliated schools: the École Polytechnique and HEC Montréal...

 and Open Society Institute
Open Society Institute
The Open Society Institute , renamed in 2011 to Open Society Foundations, is a private operating and grantmaking foundation started by George Soros, aimed to shape public policy to promote democratic governance, human rights, and economic, legal, and social reform...

; Stevan Harnad
Stevan Harnad
Stevan Harnad is a cognitive scientist.- Career :Harnad was born in Budapest, Hungary. He did his undergraduate work at McGill University and his graduate work at Princeton University's Department of Psychology...

 of the University of Southampton
University of Southampton
The University of Southampton is a British public university located in the city of Southampton, England, a member of the Russell Group. The origins of the university can be dated back to the founding of the Hartley Institution in 1862 by Henry Robertson Hartley. In 1902, the Institution developed...

/Université du Québec à Montréal
Université du Québec à Montréal
The Université du Québec à Montréal is one of four universities in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.-Basic facts:The UQAM is the largest constituent element of the Université du Québec , a public university system with other branches in Gatineau , Rimouski, Rouyn-Noranda, Quebec City, Chicoutimi, and...

; Rick Johnson
Rick Johnson
Rick Johnson may refer to:* Rick Johnson , American actor and director, and former CFL quarterback* Ricky Johnson , American motocross, NASCAR and off-road racer* Rick Johnson , American musician and bass player...

 of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition
Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition
The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition is an international alliance of academic and research libraries developed by the Association of Research Libraries in 1998 which promotes open access to scholarship. They currently have over 800 institutions in North America, Europe, Japan,...

 (SPARC); Manfredi La Manna of the Electronic Society for Social Scientists; Monika Segbert, Electronic Information for Libraries
Electronic Information for Libraries
EIFL works with libraries worldwide to enable sustainable access to high digital information for people in developing and transition countries. They are an international not-for-profit organisation based in Europe with a global network of partners....

 (eIFL.net) Project consultant; Sidnei de Souza, Informatics Director at CRIA
Cria
A cria is the name for a baby camelid such as a llama, alpaca, vicuña, or guanaco. It comes from the Spanish word cría, meaning "baby". Its false cognate in English, crya , was coined by British sailors who explored Chile in the 18th century and were quick to describe the camelids onomatopoeically...

, Bioline International; Peter Suber
Peter Suber
Peter Suber is the creator of the game Nomic and a leading voice in the open access movement. He is a senior research professor of philosophy at Earlham College, the open access project director at Public Knowledge, a senior researcher at SPARC , and a Fellow at Harvard's and...

, Professor of Philosophy, Earlham College
Earlham College
Earlham College is a liberal arts college in Richmond, Indiana. It was founded in 1847 by Quakers and has approximately 1,200 students.The president is John David Dawson...

 and The Free Online Scholarship Newsletter; Jan Velterop
Jan Velterop
Johannes Josephus Marinus Velterop is a science publisher. Born in The Hague, The Netherlands, he was originally a marine geologist and became a science publisher in the mid 1970s. He started his publishing career at Elsevier in Amsterdam...

 of BioMed Central
BioMed Central
BioMed Central is a UK-based, for-profit scientific publisher specialising in open access journal publication. BMC, and its sister companies Chemistry Central and PhysMath Central, publish over 200 scientific journals. Most BMC journals are now published only online. BMC describes itself as the...

.

On February 14, 2002, the BOAI was released in a version that could be signed by the public. By August 2006, over 360 organizations and 4,000 individuals had signed the initiative. By July 2011, these numbers were 5485 individuals and 591 organizations, respectively.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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