São Paulo Statement on Open Access | Plan S

The representatives of African Open Science Platform, AmeLICA, cOAlition S, OA2020, and SciELO – five of the major worldwide Open Access initiatives – met on 1 May 2019 during the annual meeting of the Global Research Council in São Paulo, Brazil. They are united in their common mission of making knowledge available and accessible wherever it can have the greatest impact and help solve humanity’s challenges regardless of where it was produced. The combined effect of the five initiatives has generated a new momentum in the push towards universal, full, and immediate Open Access. The Five Initiatives Jointly State That: They consider that scholarly and scientific knowledge is a global public good. When generated by public funds, free access to it is a universal right. They share one common ultimate objective: providing universal, unrestricted, and immediate Open Access to scholarly information, including use and re-use by humans and machines. They share the belief that this common goal can be achieved through a variety of approaches. They will pursue points of alignment among their approaches and ways to co-operate towards reaching the shared objective. They seek an active dialogue with all stakeholders, including researchers, research funders, universities, libraries, publishers, learned societies, governments, and citizens to take into account the diversity of the global scholarly community.