Historical Context of Open Science

Figure by Wiley, 2017, “An Illustrated History of Open Science

Timeline

As previously described at the Open Access section, some initiatives that promote access to scientific resources emerged even before receiving the “Open Science” nomenclature. The timeline below lists some of the main initiatives in the national and international context:

1971
Project Gutenberg

Michael Hart created Project Gutenberg to make electronic versions of literary works and disseminate them for free

1989
Psycoloquy

Launch of the first free online journal

1991
arXiv

Launch of arXiv, a free distribution service and an open-access archive

1996
NDLTD
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations

First established as The National Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations, became an international organization dedicated to promoting the adoption, creation, use, dissemination, and preservation of electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs)

1997
Pubmed | SciELO

PubMed is a free search engine of references and abstracts on life sciences and biomedical topics

Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO) is a bibliographic database, digital library, and cooperative electronic publishing model of open access journals

1998
PKP | SPARC*

Public Knowledge Project (PKP) is a research initiative focused on making the results of publicly funded research freely available through open access policies, and on developing strategies for making this possible including software solutions

Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) is an international alliance of academic and research libraries which promotes open access to scholarship.

1999
OAI

Open Archives Initiative (OAI) was an organization to develop and apply technical interoperability standards for archives to share catalogue information (metadata). OAI has been involved in developing a technological framework and interoperability standards for enhancing access to eprint archives, which make scholarly communications like academic journals available, associated with the open access publishing movement.

2000
BioMed Central | EPrints | PLOS

BioMed Central (BMC) is a open access publisher and the first to carry out open peer review as default

EPrints is a free and open-source software package for building open access repositories

Public Library of Science (PLOS) is a publisher of open-access journals in science, technology, medicine and other scientific literature

2001
CC | OJS

Creative Commons (CC) is an organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright licenses, known as Creative Commons licenses, free of charge to the public

Open Journal Systems (OJS) is a free software for the management of peer-reviewed academic journals

2002
BOAI | DSpace | OAIster | Sherpa Romeo | Redalyc

The Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) is a public statement of principles relating to open access to the research literature

DSpace is an open source repository software package typically used for creating open access repositories for scholarly and/or published digital content

OAIster is an online combined bibliographic catalogue of open access material aggregated

Sherpa Romeo is an online resource that aggregates and analyses publisher open access policies from around the world and provides summaries of publisher copyright and open access archiving policies on a journal-by-journal basis

Red de Revistas Científicas de América Latina y el Caribe, España y Portugal (Redalyc) is a bibliographic database and a digital library of Open Access journals

2003
Bethesda | Berlin | DOAJ | ROAR

The Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing is a 2003 statement which defines the concept of open access

The Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities is an international statement on open access and access to knowledge

Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is a website that hosts a community-curated list of open access journals

Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR), later called ROARMAP, is a searchable international database indexing the creation, location and growth of open access institutional repositories and their contents

2004
Estoril | Google Scholar | OECD Declaration

The Estoril Declaration on Access to Information published at the 8° National Congress of Librarians, Archivists and Documentalists of Portugal

Google Scholar is a free web search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly including peer-reviewed online academic journals and books, conference papers, theses and dissertations, preprints, abstracts, technical reports, and other scholarly literature, including court opinions and patents

Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) publish a declaration concerning the access to research results financed by public funds called Declaration on Access to Research Data From Public Funding

2005
SciELO Portugal
2006
OpenDOAR | Sherpa Juliet

Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) is a website that lists open access repositories

Sherpa Juliet is a searchable database and single focal point of up-to-date information concerning funders’ policies and their requirements on open access, publication and data archiving

2007
OpenLOCKSS | SCImago | DRIVER II

OpenLOCKSS was launched as a new program for the LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) project for the preservation of journals in Open Access

SCImago Journal & Country Rank is a open access database that includes the journals and country scientific indicators

2008
RCAAP

Repositórios Científicos de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (RCAAP) was created to collect, aggregate and index Open Access scientific contents from Portuguese institutional repositories

2009
OpenAIRE | COAR | Open Access Week | NECOBELAC

Open Access Infrastructure for Research in Europe (Open AIRE) is a network of open access repositories, archives and journals that support open access policies

Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR) is an association of repository initiatives created to build capacity, align policies and practices

The International Open Access Week is an annual scholarly communication event focusing on open access and related topics. It takes place globally during the last full week of October in a multitude of locations both on- and offline

NEtwork of COllaboration Between Europe and Latin American-Caribbean Countries (NECOBELAC) is launched, aa a collaborative network between Europe and Latin America and the Caribbean for the promotion of Open Access in the area of health information

2010
ConfOA | Blimunda

1st Luso-Brazilian Conference on Open Access (ConfOA), latter called Lusophone Open Science Conference

Blimunda was an initiative carried out in Portugal with the purpose of defining Portuguese scientific publishers and journals policies in relation to self-archiving in Institutional Repositories (IRs)

2011
MedOANet

Mediterranean Open Access Network (MedOANet) was created as a project that aimed to enhance policies, strategies and structures for Open Access in six Mediterranean countries: Greece, Turkey, Italy, France, Spain and Portugal

2013
ZENODO

Zenodo is a general-purpose open repository developed under the European OpenAIRE program and operated by CERN

2014
FOSTER | FCT Policy | PASTEUR4OA

Facilitate Open Science Training for European Research (FOSTER) and FOSTER+ are projects focused on promoting the practical implementation of Open Science, with activities targeting academic staff, young scientists and policy-makers in particular

Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) published the Open Access Policy for the scientific publications resulting from projects financed by FCT

Open Access Policy Alignment Strategies for European Union Research ( PASTEUR4OA) was created to help develop and reinforce open access strategies and policies among member States

2015
OA2020

OA2020 is a global alliance committed to accelerating the existing corpus of scholarly journals from subscription-based access to open access

2016
Open Research Data Meetings

1st Research Data and Open Science Conference and 1st Data Management Forum took place in Portugal

2017
National Citizen Science Meeting

1st National Citizen Science Meeting in Portugal

2021
UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science
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