Open Access in Italy

"In this short contribution I will try to outline a panorama of the diffusion of open access in Italy, starting from my point of view, that of a small independent commercial publisher, which has been publishing monographs and journals in open access, in Italian, English and other languages, for more than 10 years. I will also try to provide a few references, which I hope may be useful to further explore the issue. 

After the Budapest and Berlin Declarations, a first step towards open access in Italy can be discerned in the Messina conference of 2004, where several universities (a number that later grew to 71) signed the Berlin Declaration of the previous year. 

Over the next 20 years, there have been several developments, although, in the end, we can say with certainty that open access publication is still residual, at least for contributions published by Italian publishers or publishing platforms, while open access publication at international publishing platforms is more frequent, thanks also to the big Transformative Agreements that have been signed and that, contrary to what is happening abroad, continue to be stipulated in Italy...."