Journal of Clinical Care and Skills

Definition of Open Access Publication

An Open Access Publication[1] is one that meets the following two conditions:

1. The author(s) and copyright holder(s) grant(s) to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship[2], as well as the right to make small numbers of printed copies for their personal use.

2. A complete version of the work and all supplemental materials, including a copy of the permission as stated above, in a suitable standard electronic format is deposited immediately upon initial publication in at least one online repository that is supported by an academic institution, scholarly society, government agency, or other well-established organization that seeks to enable open access, unrestricted distribution, interoperability, and long-term archiving (for the biomedical sciences, PubMed Central is such a repository).

Notes:

1. Open access is a property of individual works, not necessarily journals or publishers.

2. Community standards, rather than copyright law, will continue to provide the mechanism for enforcement of proper attribution and responsible use of the published work, as they do now.

Therefore:

1. We endorse the principles of the open access model.

2. We recognize that publishing is a fundamental part of the research process, and the costs of publishing are a fundamental cost of doing research.

3. Scientific societies agree to affirm their strong support for the open access model and their commitment to achieve open access for all the works they publish ultimately. They will share information on the steps they are taking to achieve open access with the community they serve and with others who might benefit from their experience.

4. Scientists agree to manifest their support for open access by selectively publishing in, reviewing for, and editing for open-access journals and journals that are effectively transitioning to open access.

5. Scientists agree to advocate changes to promotion and tenure evaluation to recognize the community contribution of open access publishing and the intrinsic merit of individual articles, regardless of the titles of the journals in which they appear.

6. Scientists and societies agree that education is an indispensable part of achieving open access, and commit to educating their colleagues, members, and the public about the importance of open access and why they support it.