Berlin Declaration

In the meantime, the Berlin Declaration has been signed by almost all renowned scientific institutions. According to the Berlin Declaration, Open Access publications must meet two requirements:

  1. The authors and right holders of such publications irrevocably grant to all users the free and worldwide right of access to such publications and permit them to copy, use, distribute, transmit and publicly perform such publications in any digital medium and for any responsible purpose, and to create and distribute derivative works based thereon, provided that authorship is properly acknowledged. [...]
  2. A complete version of the publication and all supplementary materials, including a copy of the rights set forth above, shall be deposited (and thus published) in an appropriate electronic standard format in at least one online archive that uses appropriate technical standards (such as the Open Archive Rules) and that is operated and maintained by a scholarly institution, scientific society, public institution, or other established organization in an effort to enable open access, unrestricted distribution, interoperability, and long-term archiving.

Read the original text of the Berlin Declaration. Berliner Declaration