Open Access publishing

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The University of Florence promotes the principles of Open Access as defined in the 2003 Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities (University of Florence Policy Open Access to Scientific Literature).

The Berlin Declaration states that open Access products include publications of original scientific research results, raw data and metadata, sources, graphic and image digital representations, and scientific multimedia materials.

Each Open Access product must meet two requirements:

• The author and the rightsholder to this product grants to all users the free, irrevocable and universal right of access to it and the authorization to reproduce, use, distribute, transmit and publicly display it and to produce and distribute works derived from it in any digital format for any responsible purpose, subject to the authentic attribution of intellectual authorship, as well as the right to reproduce a limited quantity of printed copies for their own personal use.
• A complete version of the product and all accompanying materials, including a copy of the authorization as outlined above, in an electronic format according to an appropriate standard, is deposited (and thus published) in at least one online repository that employs appropriate technical standards (such as the Open Archives definitions) and that is supported and maintained by an academic institution, scholarly society, government agency, or any other recognized organization that pursues the goals of open access, unrestricted distribution, interoperability, and long-term archiving.

Open access is a key tool for sharing ideas and knowledge in all disciplines with an open, collaborative and nonprofit approach. Open access monographs, volume papers, and journal papers enable the scientific community to achieve wide and rapid dissemination, as well as high research impact.

A research product published in open access must provide that content and metadata are published in Open Access, under Creative Commons licenses for use, and with the author listed as the copyright holder (gold road). In addition, open access provides for and actively supports self-archiving,  practices of research products and encourages authors to deposit publications in institutional repositories or any other repository deemed valuable for the purposes of knowledge preservation and dissemination (green road).