Open Access 2012: achievements, further steps, and obstacles. An interview with Stevan Harnad. Interview by E. Giglia.

On the occasion of Open Access Week (22-­‐ 28 October) I had a talk with Stevan Harnad, a pioneer and one of the world's best-­‐ known Open Access advocates, author of the Subversive proposal (1994-­‐1995) which triggered the whole movement. Professor Harnad highlights achievements, further steps, and obstacles ten years aTer the Open Access manifesto of the Budapest Open Access IniVaVve. __________ Ten years ago, at the end of a conference promoted by the Open Society FoundaVon on February 2002, the Budapest Open Access Ini7a7ve [1] was released. It was a milestone, a starVng line in the path towards Open Access (OA), i.e. immediate, toll-­‐ free/restricVon-­‐ free access to peer reviewed literature. Or, in the words of the Ini7a7ve itself, «By " open access " to this literature we mean its free availability on the public internet, permi^ng any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link the full texts of these arVcles […] [later called " GraVs OA " ] or use them for any other lawful purposes […]. The only constraint on reproducVon and distribuVon, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited [later called " Libre OA " ]». There are two complementary strategies to achieve Open Access: open-­‐ access self-­‐ archiving, or the Green Road, and open access publishing, or the Gold Road [2]. Green Open Access Self-­‐archiving means that scholars publish in any journal but, in addiVon, deposit the final, peer-­‐ reviewed draT of their work in open archives (" repositories "), which can either be insVtuVonal or insVtuVon-­‐ external (such as the widely used arXiv for physics: www.arxiv.org); access to the deposit may be immediate or embargoed, depending on the publisher's copyright policy [3]. Gold Open Access publishing already includes some presVgious brands such as PLoS, BioMedCentral, Hindawi. OA journals' increasing presVge is reflected in citaVons and sharing on academic social networks [4]. OA is based on the principle of knowledge as a common and scholarly communicaVon as a " great conversaVon " : the more open it is to diverging voices too, the more effecVve it is. The logic of OA is: the results of publicly-­‐funded research should be publicly accessible. On this basis, 335 research insVtuVons and research funders in the world have already adopted a mandatory policy …