This journal provides immediate open access to all of its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.
All content published in this journal is freely available without charge to users or institutions.
Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to full-text articles without asking prior permission from the publisher or author. This is in accordance with the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI).
We believe that knowledge belongs to humanity — not behind paywalls. By committing to open access, we ensure that the research we publish reaches the widest possible audience, regardless of institutional affiliation or financial resources.
"Removing access barriers to this literature will accelerate research, enrich education, share the learning of the rich with the poor and the poor with the rich."
Open access transforms how knowledge is created, shared, and applied across the globe.
There are two complementary strategies for achieving open access to scholarly journal literature.
Scholars deposit their peer-reviewed journal articles in open electronic archives (repositories). When these archives conform to Open Archives Initiative standards, search engines treat separate archives as one unified, searchable resource — dramatically expanding discoverability.
A new generation of journals committed to open access — including this journal — use copyright and other tools to ensure permanent free access to all published articles, turning to alternative funding models rather than subscription fees.
The Budapest Open Access Initiative — the foundational text of the modern open access movement.
An old tradition and a new technology have converged to make possible an unprecedented public good. The old tradition is the willingness of scientists and scholars to publish the fruits of their research in scholarly journals without payment, for the sake of inquiry and knowledge. The new technology is the internet.
The public good they make possible is the world-wide electronic distribution of the peer-reviewed journal literature and completely free and unrestricted access to it by all scientists, scholars, teachers, students, and other curious minds.
This kind of free and unrestricted online availability — open access — has so far been limited to small portions of the journal literature. But even in these limited collections, many different initiatives have shown that open access is economically feasible, that it gives readers extraordinary power to find and make use of relevant literature, and that it gives authors and their works vast and measurable new visibility, readership, and impact.
The literature that should be freely accessible online is that which scholars give to the world without expectation of payment — primarily peer-reviewed journal articles, but also unreviewed preprints. By "open access" we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers.
To achieve open access to scholarly journal literature, we recommend two complementary strategies: (I) Self-Archiving — scholars deposit their refereed journal articles in open electronic archives — and (II) Open-access Journals — a new generation of journals committed to open access that do not charge subscription or access fees.
We invite governments, universities, libraries, journal editors, publishers, foundations, learned societies, professional associations, and individual scholars who share our vision to join us in the task of removing the barriers to open access and building a future in which research and education in every part of the world are that much more free to flourish.
The following scholars and advocates signed the Budapest Open Access Initiative at its founding, committing to the principle that publicly funded research should be freely accessible to all.