Preamble
“Open access” is accepted as a standard method of accessing publications produced from researches supported by public resources. Users can access the full texts of scientific publications free of charge via the public internet without any financial, legal and technical barriers. Full texts of publications can be read, downloaded, copied, distributed, printed, searched or linked to the full texts of these articles, scanned for indexing, transferred to a software as data or used for any legal purpose. A full version of scientific publications is stored in at least one online archive in order to allow open access, unlimited distribution, interoperability, and long-term archiving of these publications.
The European Commission (EC) accepts the free movement of information as one of the priorities of the European Research Area (ERA). Open access makes the research process more effective and research results more visible by removing legal, commercial and technological barriers to accessing scientific information. In 2012, the European Commission suggested that European Union (EU) member countries develop national open access policies, that research and support institutions act in this direction, and that the policies developed should be coordinated at national and European level. Moreover, in the framework program (Horizon 2020) covering the years 2014-2020, open access has been made mandatory for the researches, which are going to be supported by EU funds. Legal arrangements have been made for open access to research outputs made with public resources in countries such as the USA, Spain and Italy. The Association of European Research Universities supports open access to scientific publications and data.