Timeline of the open-access movement

The following is a timeline of the international movement for open access to scholarly communication.

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."
• 1987
• Syracuse University in the US issues one of the world's first open access journals, New Horizons in Adult Education ().
• 1991
• 14 August: ArXiv repository of physics research papers established at Los Alamos National Laboratory in the US.
• 1994
• 27 June: Stevan Harnad posts a "Subversive Proposal" 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 (Scientific Electronic Library Online) launched.
• Public Knowledge Project founded in Canada.
• Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition founded in North America.
• 1999
• October: Open Archives Initiative on interoperability standards holds its first meeting, in New Mexico, US.

2000s

• 2000
• BioMed Central publisher established.
• 2001
• 15 January: Creative Commons founded in the United States.
• Public Library of Science publisher active.
• Open Journal Systems free software published.
• SPARC Europe established to promote open access in Europe.
• 2002
• 14 February: Budapest Open Access Initiative statement issued.
• 28 June: US-based OAIster catalog begins.
• 2003
• 11 April: Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing formed.
• 22 October: Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities 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) established in Mexico.
• 2004
• UK Digital Curation Centre founded.
• Bielefeld Academic Search Engine launched by Bielefeld University, Germany.
• Publisher Springer begins "hybrid option 'Open Choice' for their full portfolio of over 1,000 subscription journals."
• 30 January: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development issues "Declaration on Access to Research Data from Public Funding."
• 2005
• Directory of Open Access Repositories begins publication.
• 2007
• European Research Council issues "its first Scientific Council Guidelines for open access."
• 2008
• Durham Statement on Open Access to Legal Scholarship 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 project begins, supporting implementation of open access in Europe.
• Confederation of Open Access Repositories founded.

2010s

• 2010
• "Beall's list" of predatory open access publishers begins circulating.
• 2011
• 20 January: #icanhazPDF begins on Twitter.
• 5 September: Sci-Hub launched by Alexandra Elbakyan.
• 16 December: United States Research Works Act bill introduced.
• UK-based CORE (COnnecting REpositories) aggregation service founded.
• 2012
• Knowledge Unlatched established.
• Pasteur4OA (Open Access Policy Alignment Strategies for European Union Research) begins.
• The Cost of Knowledge protest begins against high prices charged by large publisher Elsevier.
• 22 October: Brussels Declaration signed, on open access to Belgian publicly funded research.
• 2013
• PeerJ megajournal begins publication.
• Registry of Research Data Repositories begins operating.
• 4 October: "Who's Afraid of Peer Review?" published in Science.
• 2014
• FOSTER Project (Facilitate Open Science Training for European Research) begins.
• 2016
• 7 March: Open Data Button (browser extension) launched.
• 2017
• April: UnpayWall Button (Browser extension) 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).

See also

• Access to Knowledge movement
• History of open access
• Open access: history
• Timeline of free and open-source software

References

Citations

• (Includes timeline)
• . Also: Milestones. (News feed)
• Compilation of Peter Suber's contributions to the history of open access, 1992–present.
• This timeline was created and initially maintained by Peter Suber, who crowd-sourced it in February 2009 by moving it to the Open Access Directory.

Further reading

• . (Timeline)

External links

• Declarations in support of OA
• Timeline of the open access movement at the Open Access Directory since 2009.