Timeline 2005

This list is part of the Open Access Directory.

January 26, 2005. Several U.S. and international library associations released their Library-Related Principles for the International Development Agenda of the World Intellectual Property Organization.

February 3, 2005. The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) released its long-awaited public-access policy. (See SOAN for 2/2/05.)

February 24, 2005. Blackwell Publishing launched its Online Open hybrid journal program.

March 1, 2005. Participants in the Berlin3 conference issued a recommendation that institutions wishing to implement the Berlin Declaration on Open Access should "require their researchers to deposit a copy of all their published articles in an open access repository" and "encourage their researchers to publish their research articles in open access journals where a suitable journal exists and provide the support to enable that to happen." Such institutions needn't re-word or re-sign the Berlin Declaration, but merely register their commitment and describe their policies.

March 5, 2005. SPARC officially launched its Author's Addendum to help authors modify publishing contracts and retain the rights they need to authorize open access.

March 18, 2005. The Open Access Scientific Publishing Committee of the Finnish Ministry of Education issued a report (in Finnish) endorsing open access and making recommendations for nationwide support and adoption. There is an English-language abstract.

April 2005. The European Bureau of Library, Information and Documentation Associations (EBLIDA) issued a Statement Towards an Effective Scientific Publishing System for European Research, endorsing open access.

May 2005. The Petition for Open Data in Crystallography is launched by the Crystallography Open Database Advisory Board.

May 2, 2005. The NIH Public Access Policy went into effect. (See my FAQ for details on the procedural history of this policy.)

May 15, 2005. Scholars from Vienna's Universitätslehrgang for Informationsrecht und Rechtsinformation publish the Vienna Declaration: 10 Theses on Freedom of Information.

May 20, 2005. The Electronic Geophysical Year published the Declaration for a Geoscience Information Commons

June 2005. The Russell Group, representing 19 major research universities that receive 60% of the research grants in the UK, issued a statement endorsing open access.

June 17, 2005. The Canadian Library Association adopted a Access_Final.pdf resolution endorsing open access. (Scroll to the appendix.)

June 28, 2005. The Research Councils UK released its draft open-access policy for a period of public comment to end on August 31, 2005. The policy would mandate open access to virtually all publicly-funded research in the UK. (SOAN for 7/2/05.)

July 1, 2005. Oxford University Press launched its Oxford Open hybrid journal program.

August 16, 2005. Springer created the position of Director of Open Access and appointed Jan Velterop, former publisher of BioMed Central. Springer became the first major commercial publisher to have such a position.

August 20, 2005. The Open Knowledge Foundation Network published a manifesto, Open Access to State-Collected Geospatial Data.

September 1, 2005. CODATA announced the launch of the Global Information Commons for Science.

September 2, 2005. The Boston Library Consortium adopted an to publication agreement.pdf Agreement to Extend Author's Rights and plans to use it on member campuses to educate faculty about their rights and help them retain the rights they need to authorize open access.

September 8, 2005. Universities UK, representing all UK universities, issued a statement endorsing open access and the draft RCUK open-access policy.

September 15, 2005. CalPIRG (California Public Interest Research Group) endorsed open access.

September 22, 2005. UNESCO adopted Amendments to the Draft Programme and Budget for 2006-2007 that explicitly endorsed open access.

September 23, 2005. Participants at the 9th World Congress on Health Information and Libraries, Commitment to Equity (Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, September 20-23, 2005) issued two declarations on access to knowledge. The first, The Declaration of Salvador - Commitment to Equity, asks governments to promote equitable and open access. The second, The Salvador Declaration on Open Access: The Developing World Perspective, asks governments to require open access to publicly-funded research.

September 30, 2005. The International Association for Media and Communication Research proposed the International Researchers' Charter for adoption at the November 2005 WSIS meeting in Tunis.

October 1, 2005. The Wellcome Trust started implementing its new open-access mandate for Wellcome-funded research.

October 3, 2005. The Internet Archive and an international group of for-profit and non-profit partners launched the Open Content Alliance.

October 13, 2005. The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce published the Adelphi Charter on Creativity, Innovation and Intellectual Property, which articulated a positive vision of intellectual property and endorsed open access.

December 2005. France's Institut Géographique National published a report recommending open access to France's publicly-funded geodata.

December 1, 2005. The Ukrainian Parliament adopted a resolution identifying open access as a national priority (Ukranian text, English summary).

December 2, 2005. IBICT (Instituto Brasileiro de Informação em Ciência e Tecnologia) issued the São Paolo Declaration in Support of Open Access.

December 14, 2005. Senators Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) and Thad Cochran (R-MS) introduced the American Center for CURES Act of 2005, which would mandate open access to publicly-funded medical research sponsored by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Agency for Healthcare Research.

See also