Crimea Open Access Manifesto

Crimea Open Access Manifesto

«A spectre is haunting Europe”
The spectre of Open Access

We, the participants of the 19 –th International Crimean Conference "Crimea 2012: Libraries and information recourses in modern world of science, culture, education and business ” – the most important world professional event for librarians and publishers, scholars and professors, museum and archive specialists, businessmen, law specialists, representatives of education, culture and science; supporting the Open Access Initiative and principles of free access to information, claim as follows
Open access to scholar information - the basis of modern Information Society and Knowledge Society; science, culture, education development in global world.

Open access to scholar information as the most important condition for integration to the world scholar community especially current for the scholars- representatives of developing and independent countries (where the tradition of information barriers has been present for many years).

We are concerned by the fact of the limited access to scholar information via libraries due to high prices on scholar literature especially on scholar journals, and by the lack of opportunity to subscribe and buy necessary materials for the users.

We are concerned by the fact of limited dissemination of the research results via traditional scholar communication model especially in new independent countries.

We are sure that the Open Access model (via creation and usage of open scholar journals and thematic repositories) – is not only successful way of scholar communication but the most important condition of scholar, social, and economical importance of researches improvement; collaborative researches development; integration to the world academic society.

We support famous initiatives and international Open Access projects: Budapest and Berlin Declarations; claims of IFLA, SPARC, LIBER, EiFL, COAR, OASPA; European Universities Association etc.

We address the researchers from all over the world with the claim to post their research results (articles, reports, dissertations etc.) in open scholar journals and thematic or institutional repositories.

We address the universities and other research institutions with the claim to develop institutional policies and strategies of the open access to full texts of peer-reviewed research results (via open scientific journals and institutional repositories); to assist free usage of this information for scholar and academic activity.

We address the publishers of academic journals to treat the copyright respectfully and not to prevent scholars from posting their postprints in the open access without limitations or with minimal embargo period.

We address the libraries with the claim to popularize open access among the users. University and academic libraries to initiate creation and development of institutional and thematic repositories as the sources of providing open access to research materials and contribution to the prestige of the university or scholar community; providing archiving and preservation of scholar publications, guaranties of its’ stability. Public libraries to provide professional search of scholar information in the open access, initiate the creation of local communities’ repositories. For repository creation to take into consideration international experience , interoperability, OAIPMH – compatibility.

We suggest to create , as a possible step, the Crimean Open Access repository on the basis of the State Public Research and Technical Library of Russia, National University of Kyiv–Mohyla Academy, and Crimean Ivan Franko Universal Research Library. To include in it not only the works of all Crimean conferences but also the publications of all Crimean conference participants who want to share their research results.