This one was signed by pretty high-ranking German research bureaucrats, in
fact from the highest rank.
Best, Thomas B
------------
<http://www.zim.mpg.de/openaccess-berlin/berlindeclaration.html>
Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and
Humanities
Preface
The Internet has fundamentally changed the practical and economic realities
of distributing scientific knowledge and cultural heritage. For the first
time ever, the Internet now offers the chance to constitute a global and
interactive representation of human knowledge, including cultural heritage
and the guarantee of worldwide access.
We, the undersigned, feel obliged to address the challenges of the Internet
as an emerging functional medium for distributing knowledge. Obviously,
these developments will be able to significantly modify the nature of
scientific publishing as well as the existing system of quality assurance.
In accordance with the spirit of the Declaration of the Budapest Open Acess
Initiative, the ECHO Charter and the Bethesda Statement on Open Access
Publishing, we have drafted the Berlin Declaration to promote the Internet
as a functional instrument for a global scientific knowledge base and human
reflection and to specify measures which research policy makers, research
institutions, funding agencies, libraries, archives and museums need to
consider.
Goals
Our mission of disseminating knowledge is only half complete if the
information is not made widely and readily available to society. New
possibilities of knowledge dissemination not only through the classical
form but also and increasingly through the open access paradigm via the
Internet have to be supported. We define open access as a comprehensive
source of human knowledge and cultural heritage that has been approved by
the scientific community.
In order to realize the vision of a global and accessible representation of
knowledge, the future Web has to be sustainable, interactive, and
transparent. Content and software tools must be openly accessible and
compatible.
Definition of an Open Access Contribution
Establishing open access as a worthwhile procedure ideally requires the
active commitment of each and every individual producer of scientific
knowledge and holder of cultural heritage. Open access contributions
include original scientific research results, raw data and metadata, source
materials, digital representations of pictorial and graphical materials and
scholarly multimedia material.
Open access contributions must satisfy two conditions:
1. 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.
2. 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.
Supporting the Transition to the Electronic Open Access Paradigm
Our organizations are interested in the further promotion of the new open
access paradigm to gain the most benefit for science and society.
Therefore, we intend to make progress by
* encouraging our researchers/grant recipients to publish their work
according to the principles of the open access paradigm.
* encouraging the holders of cultural heritage to support open access
by providing their resources on the Internet.
* developing means and ways to evaluate open access contributions and
online-journals in order to maintain the standards of quality assurance and
good scientific practice.
* advocating that open access publication be recognized in promotion
and tenure evaluation.
* advocating the intrinsic merit of contributions to an open access
infrastructure by software tool development, content provision, metadata
creation, or the publication of individual articles.
We realize that the process of moving to open access changes the
dissemination of knowledge with respect to legal and financial aspects. Our
organizations aim to find solutions that support further development of the
existing legal and financial frameworks in order to facilitate optimal use
and access.
_______________________
http://www.oekonux.org/