Some of the Initiatives in the Scholarly Communication Arena

Open Access
A term used to represent both an idea, that the results of publicly funded research be freely available, and a movement, characterized by various initiatives to make published scholarly literature freely available on the web. Below are some examples of open access initiatives

Budapest Open Access Initiative
Arose from a small but lively meeting convened in Budapest by the Open Society Institute (OSI) in December 2001

BOAI10 Recommendations
September 12, 2012; 10 years on from the original BOAI, Open Access leaders recommend new policy and practice guidelines

Berlin Declaration
The Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities is the outcome of international conference; the declaration forwards efforts "to promote the Internet as a functional instrument for a global scientific knowledge base" (October 2003)

NIH Policy for Public Access
On January 11, 2008, in response to an act of Congress, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced a revision of its Public Access Policy. Effective April 7, 2008, the agency requires investigators to deposit their articles stemming from NIH funding in the NIH online archive.

ARL's Guide for Research Universities: NIH Public Access Policy

Disciplinary Repositories
One response has been for publishers, societies, and scholars to create new mechanisms for distribution of scholarship, within disciplines or disciplinary groups.

Institutional Repositories
Many academic institutions archive their scholarly output. Some include published and unpublished works (grey literature); others include only unpublished. Some include works by students as well as faculty; some only by faculty.