Sergio Amadeu da Silveira - Cidadania e Redes Digitais

eng
c i t i z e n s h i p a n d d i g i t a l n e t w o r k s
Open Access is a knowledge distribution model through which articles of academic
magazines reviewed by peers are published and distributed openly (open
copyright licenses are attributed) and freely in the Internet. In the age when the
printing of physical copies for knowledge distribution was the rule, free access was
economically and physically impossible. Actually, in this context, the lack of physical
access to the publications coincided with the lack of access to knowledge —
without physical access to a library with a good archive of scientific magazines and
journals, access to knowledge was impossible. The ICT radically changed this situation.
Physical access to the ICT is made in a much easier manner than access to
a library hosting journals. However, the access to scientific knowledge still finds
barriers of legal character, provided that all content placed in the Internet has all of
its rights protected in the lack of an open license. Open Access, on its turn, changes
this situation, to the extent in which it requires the use of free licenses allowing the
legal interoperability of the contents 8 .
The key definition of the Open Access concept comes from the Budapest Initiative
for Open Access 9 :
“By ‘open access’ to literature, we refer to its free and open availability in the
public Internet, allowing any user to read, download, copy, distribute, print,
research or connect the full texts of these articles, or index them, or process as
data for software, or use them for any other licit purpose, without financial, legal
or technical barriers in addition to those that are inseparable of access to the
Internet itself. The sole restriction about the reproduction and distribution, and
the sole function of the authorial rights in this domain, must be that of granting
the authors control on the integrity of their work, and the right of being duly
acknowledged and quoted.” (BOAI, 2001)
8. By legal compatibility or interoperability, we mean that the users rights granted by the author
through open licenses are legally compatible and allow the works to be unified, remixed and mixed. To
understand the compatibility of works licensed by Creative Commons, see the table: http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/7145.
9. “The Budapest Initiative for Open Access appears from a small, but vivid meeting called in Budapest
by the Open Society Institute (OSI) on December 1 st and 2 nd , 2001. The purpose of the meeting
was to accelerate the progress in the international endeavor to make the research articles in all academic
fields available for free in the Internet. The participants represented many points of view, many academic
disciplines and many nations, and knew many of the initiatives in course that comprise the open
access movement.” http://www.soros.org/openaccess.
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