The Association of College & Research Libraries has signed the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities.
Here's an excerpt from the announcement:
ACRL has long supported open access to scholarship as a central principle for reform in the system of scholarly communication. In ACRL's new strategic plan, the plan for excellence, the goal in the area of research and scholarly environment is that librarians accelerate the transition to a more open system of scholarship. Signing the Berlin Declaration is one way college and university libraries can demonstrate their intention to influence scholarly publishing policies and practices toward a more open system. Earlier this year, ACRL demonstrated its own commitment to open access by removing price barriers to the scholarly journal College and Research Libraries, which is now available at no charge from 1997 to the present through the publication website.
Here's an excerpt from the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities (emphasis added):
Open access contributions must satisfy two conditions:
- The author(s) and right holder(s) of such contributions grant(s) to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship (community standards, will continue to provide the mechanism for enforcement of proper attribution and responsible use of the published work, as they do now), as well as the right to make small numbers of printed copies for their personal use.
- A complete version of the work and all supplemental materials, including a copy of the permission as stated above, in an appropriate standard electronic format is deposited (and thus published) in at least one online repository using suitable technical standards (such as the Open Archive definitions) that is supported and maintained by an academic institution, scholarly society, government agency, or other well-established organization that seeks to enable open access, unrestricted distribution, inter operability, and long-term archiving.
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