Timeline of the open-access movement

The following is a timeline of the international movement for open access to scholarly communication.

• 1942
  • American sociologist Robert King Merton declares: "Each researcher must contribute to the 'common pot' and give up intellectual property rights to allow knowledge to move forward."
• 1971
  • "World's first online digital library is launched, Project Gutenberg."
• 1987
  • Syracuse University in the US issues one of the world's first open access journals, New Horizons in Adult Education (ISSN 1062-3183).
• 1991
  • 14 August: ArXiv repository of physics research papers established at Los Alamos National Laboratory in the US.
• 1994
  • 27 June: Stevan Harnad posts a "Subversive Proposal" for authors to archive their articles for free for everyone online.
  • July 1994. Electronic Green Journal (EGJ) was launched by the University of Idaho Library. Since 2009 it is published by the University of California eScholarship. The EGJ is a peer-reviewed publication devoted to information about international sources on environmental protection, conservation, management of natural resources, and sustainability.
• 1998
  • Brazil-based SciELO (Scientific Electronic Library Online) launched.
  • Public Knowledge Project founded in Canada.
  • Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition founded in North America.
• 1999
  • October: Open Archives Initiative on interoperability standards holds its first meeting, in New Mexico, US.

• 2000
  • BioMed Central publisher established.
• 2001
  • 15 January: Creative Commons founded in the United States.
  • Public Library of Science publisher active.
  • Open Journal Systems free software published.
  • SPARC Europe established to promote open access in Europe.
• 2002
  • 14 February: Budapest Open Access Initiative statement issued.
  • 28 June: US-based OAIster catalog begins.
• 2003
  • 11 April: Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing formed.
  • 22 October: Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities published.
  • 25 December: Institutional Self-Archiving Policy Registry launched (later called ROARMAP).
  • Redalyc (Red de Revistas Científicas de América Latina y El Caribe, España y Portugal) established in Mexico.
• 2004
  • UK Digital Curation Centre founded.
  • Bielefeld Academic Search Engine launched by Bielefeld University, Germany.
  • Publisher Springer begins "hybrid option 'Open Choice' for their full portfolio of over 1,000 subscription journals."
  • 30 January: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development issues "Declaration on Access to Research Data from Public Funding."
• 2005
  • Directory of Open Access Repositories begins publication.
• 2007
  • European Research Council issues "its first Scientific Council Guidelines for open access."
• 2008
  • Durham Statement on Open Access to Legal Scholarship written.
  • 7 April: United States National Institutes of Health Public Access Policy effected.
  • July: Aaron Swartz releases the "Guerilla Open Access Manifesto", to send "a strong message against the privatization of knowledge".
• 2009
  • 12 January: European Commission-funded OpenAIRE project begins, supporting implementation of open access in Europe.
  • Confederation of Open Access Repositories founded.

• 2010
  • "Beall's list" of predatory open access publishers begins circulating.
• 2011
  • 20 January: #icanhazPDF begins on Twitter.
  • 5 September: Sci-Hub launched by Alexandra Elbakyan.
  • 16 December: United States Research Works Act bill introduced.
  • UK-based CORE (COnnecting REpositories) aggregation service founded.
• 2012
  • Knowledge Unlatched established.
  • Pasteur4OA (Open Access Policy Alignment Strategies for European Union Research) begins.
  • The Cost of Knowledge protest begins against high prices charged by large publisher Elsevier.
  • 22 October: Brussels Declaration signed, on open access to Belgian publicly funded research.
• 2013
  • PeerJ megajournal begins publication.
  • Registry of Research Data Repositories begins operating.
  • 4 October: "Who's Afraid of Peer Review?" published in Science.
• 2014
  • FOSTER Project (Facilitate Open Science Training for European Research) begins.
• 2016
  • 7 March: Open Data Button (browser extension) launched.
• 2017
  • April: UnpayWall Button (Browser extension) launched (90 million articles are indexed)
  • 10 October: Jussieu Call statement issued
  • Plug-in search tool Canary Haz launched to enable access to PDF versions of articles (later renamed Kopernio.com).

• Access to Knowledge movement
• History of open access
• Open access: history
• Timeline of free and open-source software

• "Origins of OA". US: University of Pittsburgh. (Includes timeline)
• "History of", Open Access Tracking Project, Harvard University. Also: Milestones. (News feed)
• Peter Suber. "History of open access". Harvard University. Compilation of Peter Suber's contributions to the history of open access, 1992–present.
• "Timeline of the open access movement". Open Access Directory. This timeline was created and initially maintained by Peter Suber, who crowd-sourced it in February 2009 by moving it to the Open Access Directory.

• Mikael Laakso; et al. (2011). "Development of Open Access Journal Publishing from 1993 to 2009". PLOS One. 6 (6): e20961. Bibcode:2011PLoSO...620961L. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0020961. PMC 3113847. PMID 21695139.
• "Evolution of Open Access: A Brief History", SciElo in Perspective, Brazil: SciElo, 21 October 2013. (Timeline)
• Marie Lebert (2015), Open Access: a "chronology" (or timeline)

• Declarations in support of OA
• Timeline of the open access movement at the Open Access Directory since 2009.