Setting the default to open

New recommendations for open access policy have been released by the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI).

An announcement from SPARC describes the guidelines that mark 10 years since the first clearly defined ideas about open access by BOAI.

"The Open Access recommendations include the development of Open Access policies in institutions of higher education and in funding agencies, the open licensing of scholarly works, the development of infrastructure such as Open Access repositories and creating standards of professional conduct for Open Access publishing. The recommendations also establish a new goal of achieving Open Access as the default method for distributing new peer-reviewed research in every field and in every country within ten years’ time." (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition)

The BOAI Recommendations for the next 10 years provide clear strategy for institutional, funder and publisher policy, guidance on licensing and infrastructure and advice on advocacy. The recommendations close with "truths about OA":

• OA benefits research and researchers, and the lack of OA impedes them.
• OA for publicly-funded research benefits taxpayers and increases the return on their investment in research. It has economic benefits as well as academic or scholarly benefits.
• OA amplifies the social value of research, and OA policies amplify the social value of funding agencies and research institutions.
• The costs of OA can be recovered without adding more money to the current system of scholarly communication.
• OA is consistent with copyright law everywhere in the world, and gives both authors and readers more rights than they have under conventional publishing agreements.
• OA is consistent with the highest standards of quality.

See also: Reflections on the BOAI-10 recommendations from Alma Swan (Key Perspectives Ltd & SPARC Europe), interviewed by Richard Poynder.