Open research policy and advocacy — Vitae Website

"Since the first scientific journals were established in the 17th century, academic researchers have published their methods and results without direct payment. There have always been barriers to accessing research outputs however - both for those within and those outside the scientific community. Examples of barriers are the cost of buying journals, language or formats that hamper understanding and lack of awareness of the research. Before the advent of the internet there were efforts to broaden access to academic research but from the 1990s, digital files, the internet and the world wide web have offered new possibilities for how this can happen ..."