The ​​Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities (2003) was a milestone in the movement and still provides one of the best explanations of its founding principles.

Open access is the legal means by which the creators of content (text, video, data) and tools (applications, programs, code) ensure that their works are perpetually free to access AND reuse with proper attribution.

According to the Berlin Declaration, two conditions must be met for a work to be considered open access and they involve licensing and depositing it such that it is permanently accessible and usable:

1. The author / rights holder must license the work such that it will always be free to access and reuse with proper attribution.
2. The author / rights holder must deposit the work in an online repository that “is supported and maintained 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.”

Scholarly Works is Adelphi University’s institutional repository and contains many openly licensed works by students and faculty. To learn more about the open licenses that grant permission for a work to be reused with various conditions, see our Open Access Guide.