Timeline 2003

This list is part of the Open Access Directory.

• This is a section within the larger Timeline of the open access movement.

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• 2003. ASCUS (Academic Serials in Communication Unified System) launched by a group of universities, libraries, and societies. The goal is to create an online database of free and affordable society journals in the field of communications.

• January 15, 2003. In Eldred v. Ashcroft, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that legislation retroactively extending the term of copyright, or pirating from the public domain, is constitutional.

• January 23, 2003. The University of Southampton Department of Electronics and Computer Science adopted a of Southampton Department of Electronics and Computer Science policy that faculty research "is to be" on deposit in one of the department's four open-access repositories.

• January 29, 2003. The Budapest Open Access Initiative published two business guides for open-access publishing, one for launching new open-access journals and one for converting traditional journals to open access, each written by Raym Crow and Howard Goldstein.

• January 31, 2003. SPARC published the SPARC Institutional Repository Checklist & Resource Guide, by Raym Crow.

• February 14, 2003. The BOAI Forum was launched by the Budapest Open Access Initiative.

• February 26, 2003. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) adopted its Data Sharing Policy.

• April 14, 2003. The Royal Society released a report, Keeping science open, advocating intellectual property law reforms (in copyright, patents, and database rights) to widen access to scientific publications and remove obstacles to the process of scientific inquiry.

• May 1, 2003. FEDORA (Flexible Extensible Digital Object and Repository Architecture) version 1.0 was launched by the University of Virginia and Cornell University. See these details, and these, on the history of FEDORA.

• May 12, 2003. The Directory of Open Access Journals launched by Lund University with funding from the Open Society Institute and SPARC. (First announced February 14, 2003, but not officially launched until May 12.)

• June 17, 2003. JISC bought 15-month institutional memberships in BioMed Central for all 180 universities in the UK. The memberships begin July 1. See these details on the purchase.

• June 20, 2003. The Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing is released.

• June 26, 2003. Rep. Martin O. Sabo (D-MN) introduced the Public Access to Science Act (HR 2613).

• July 1, 2003. Public Knowledge launched its Open Access Project.

• July 3, 2003. Leon Fink and rest of his editorial board resigned from Labor History in order to launch the journal Labor. See Journal declarations of independence.

• July 4, 2003. The SPARC Open Access Forum (SOAF) launched by SPARC, moderated by Peter Suber.

• August 28, 2003. The ACRL (Association of College & Research Libraries) released its Principles and Strategies for the Reform of Scholarly Communication, endorsing open access.

• September 2003. Queensland University of Technology (QUT) adopted a policy that faculty research "is to be" on deposit in the QUT open-access repository. The policy took effect on January 1, 2004. This is the first university-level open-access mandate.

• September 29, 2003. The Company of Biologists announced a one-year experimental hybrid open-access model for its three journals.
• October 1, 2003. A group of library associations and public-interest advocacy organizations launched the Open Access Working Group.

• October 1, 2003. The Wellcome Trust issued a postion statement and research report endorsing open access. (SOAN for 10/2/03.)

• October 7, 2003. The Medical Library Association issued its Statement on Open Access.

• October 13, 2003. The Public Library of Science launched its first open-access journal, PLoS Biology. (SOAN for 11/2/03.)

• October 19, 2003. The Third World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) issued the Beijing Declaration on scientific advancement, openness, and cooperation.

• October 21, 2003. PubMed Central became OAI-compliant (details).

• October 22, 2003. The Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities was released by the Max Planck Society and European Cultural Heritage Online. (SOAN for 11/2/03.)

• October 27, 2003. The Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) released a public statement on open access. (It is dated August 27, 2003, apparently the date the ALPSP board adopted it, but it was not released until October 27.) It is brief, but notable for encouraging society publishers to experiment with open access.

• December 4, 2003. The Interacademy Panel on International Issues (IAP), a consortium of science academies from around the world, issued a statement on Access to Scientific Information. The statement endorses some open-access initiatives without using the term "open access".

• December 10, 2003. The UK House of Commons Science and Technology Committee launched an inquiry into the prices and accessibility of scientific journals, including the question whether the government should support open-access journals.

• December 12, 2003. The UN World Summit on the Information Society approved a Declaration of Principles and Plan of Action that contained explicit, if brief, endorsements of open access to scientific information.

• December 25, 2003. Stevan Harnad launched the Institutional Self-Archiving Policy Registry.

• December 31, 2003. The entire editorial board of the Journal of Algorithms resigned in order to launch Transactions on Algorithms. See Journal declarations of independence.