The Budapest initiative for Open Access

Abstract

Scholarly publication is in a crisis : partially dominated by commercial interests in the form of oligopolies which don't have a great concern for scientists needs, the Republic of Sciences has been transformed into a scientific plutocracy where different forms of elitism and exclusion reign. The cost of scientific journals is by now out of range of the great part of the world and the less rich institutions in rich Countries. There are some palliative efforts like OSI eIFL. But against the intrigues of oligopolies, few solutions exist. Little commercial enterprises or learned societies with modest financial ambitions leave you in a sceptical attitude. The only feasible solution is to go at the base of the topic of scholarly publications and to build publication processes which answer in the best possible way to the needs of scientists, to the needs of research managers and to the needs of patrons and public requirements which support the great part of the world fundamental research. For scholarly communication, the best way to accomplish these different purposes is to put itself into open access, re-working the stages and the meanings of the different forms of evaluation which must accompany these communication flows. Society Institute, like other philantropic organizations, takes clearly sides in the field of open access scientific communication. The textual version of this speech at the Conference Open Access to Scientific and Technical Information: State of the Art and Future Trends was published in Information Services and Use vol. 23 (2003), issue 2-3, p. 171-173.