Foundations and Governance of Open Access and Open Science
What this domain tests
The Foundations and Governance domain tests whether you can distinguish open access (OA) from the wider open science movement and explain who governs each. Expect definitions, landmark statements, policy instruments and the division of responsibility among funders, institutions, publishers, libraries and infrastructures.
Core rules
- OA means free online availability plus reuse rights; free-to-read alone is not OA.
- The Budapest Open Access Initiative (2002) named two routes: self-archiving (green) and OA journals (gold). The Bethesda (2003) and Berlin (2003) statements broadened the agenda.
- UNESCO's 2021 Recommendation on Open Science treats open science as a global policy framework covering publications, data, software, methods, peer review, educational resources and citizen science.
- Governance is multi-level: international norms, national policies, funder mandates, institutional repositories and publisher terms. Declarations are normative, not usually legally binding.
- Open science principles include transparency, reproducibility, equity and collaboration; OA is one pillar, not the whole.
Worked example
A funder requires deposit of the accepted manuscript in an institutional repository within 12 months and permits all rights reserved. Reasoning: this is green OA compliance, but it is not full open science because reuse is restricted. If the policy also required CC BY, the article would meet stronger open-access and reuse criteria. The 12-month embargo would still fail a policy demanding immediate deposit.
Traps that cost marks
Equating free to read with open access; treating the Berlin Declaration as enforceable law; assuming open science equals OA publishing; and ignoring that libraries, repositories and learned societies also govern access.