ECHO Open Access Policy
ECHO aims to develop an open-access infrastructure for making resources publicly available online with little effort and in a way that guarantees the interoperability with other contents and tools, thus creating an added value for every user.
What is needed:
- an infrastructure that makes scientific contributions as rapidly and effectively available as possible,
- an infrastructure using the potential of the Internet to constitute a global and interactive representation of human knowledge,
- an infrastructure that guarantees worldwide open access,
- an infrastructure that enable users to pursue their specific interests while contributing, at the same time, to a shared body of digitally represented knowledge,
- an infrastructure that integrates self-accelerating dynamics,
- an infrastructure that offers interoperability, modularity, and interactivity.
The ECHO infrastructure aims to implement a self-organizing mechanism of the Web and will improve the hypertext linking of the Web and hence increase its transparency. Such a future Web of Culture and Science should be characterized by significantly enhenced longevity, interactivity, and transparency.
"ECHO shall undertake all efforts to make cultural heritage accessible and understandable to the general public across national, cultural, and linguistic barriers.
All ECHO content shall be made freely available on the Internet in the most technically adequate and feasible way possible…"
(ECHO Charter, 2002)
"Our mission of disseminating knowledge is only half complete if the information is not made widely and readily available to society. New possibilities of knowledge dissemination not only through the classical form but also and increasingly through the open access paradigm via the Internet have to be supported. We define open access as a comprehensive source of human knowledge and cultural heritage that has been approved by the scientific community."
(Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in Science and Culture, 2003)
"The recent Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities...is definitively a very important step in favor of Open Access that is likely to trigger a paradigm change all over the world …"
(Final Statement of the World Summit on the Information Society, 2003)
|
