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 (ISSN 1062-3183). 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 "Origins of OA". US: University of Pittsburgh. (Includes timeline) "History of", Open Access Tracking Project, Harvard University. Also: Milestones. (News feed) Peter Suber. "History of open access". Harvard University. Compilation of Peter Suber's contributions to the history of open access, 1992–present. "Timeline of the open access movement". Open Access Directory. 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 Mikael Laakso; et al. (2011). "Development of Open Access Journal Publishing from 1993 to 2009". PLOS One. 6 (6) e20961. Bibcode:2011PLoSO...620961L. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0020961. PMC 3113847. PMID 21695139. "Evolution of Open Access: A Brief History", SciElo in Perspective, Brazil: SciElo, 21 October 2013. (Timeline) Marie Lebert (2015), Open Access: a "chronology" (or timeline)
External links Declarations in support of OA Timeline of the open access movement at the Open Access Directory since 2009.