In the spirit of Budapest: open access and transformative agreements

Abstract

Twenty years after its birth, the Open Access Movement has significantly influenced the dissemination of the results of scientific research. Most of the articles published demand some form of openness; 50 million are those deposited in open archives and the institutions that have joined the Budapest Initiative are more than thousand. The success of the initiative is all the more surprising in the context of a privatization of goods and services implemented by national and supranational communities. Yet, most open access practices are still linked to the gold road, increasingly implemented through transformative agreements. We believe that this model, lucrative for publishers and burdensome for researchers, does not respect the true spirit of open access, which implies, as can be inferred from the declaration released for the twentieth anniversary of BOAI, an idea of ​​scientific resources and science as common goods. A different model for the dissemination of research, in addition to being more sustainable, could report more precisely on the research process itself, facilitating the broad conversation necessary for the advancement of science.