Open access policy

The Open Access movement to science is an interesting contribution to research and teaching in the context of the information society and, therefore, to the dissemination of science.

By open access to scientific literature, we mean its free availability on the Internet - even with proven quality - so that any user can read, download, copy, distribute or print it, with the possibility of searching or linking to the full text of the article, use it for any other legal purpose, without any financial, legal or technical barriers other than the fundamental one of accessing the Internet. The only limit to reproduction and distribution and the only function of copyright in this context is to guarantee authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be recognized and cited, covered by internationally recognized Creative Commons licenses.

Open access has its origins in initiatives to store quality information from different collections and sources of the Open Society Institute (OSI), a foundation created in 1993 by George Soros that urged the promotion of partnerships, protected by government policies, to support projects related to social issues of interest.

In 1999 a meeting took place in Budapest, the World Conference on Science for the 21st Century: Declaration on Science and the Use of Scientific Knowledge. This initiative brought new power to the research community, as it facilitated the use of relevant scientific literature and gave authors and their work new visibility by removing price barriers.

What we know today as open access took off in 2001 with a letter that some prestigious researchers sent to their colleagues asking them to refuse to publish in journals that did not grant them the right to freely use their articles at least 6 months after publication. The movement was consolidated and is now known as the Public Library of Science http://www.plos.org/about/what-is-plos/earlyhistory/.