OA Week: History of Open Access

This post is part of a series published over the course of OAWeek 2019.

Timeline of scientific output from [1]. Click to enlarge.

This post will walk us through the History of Open Access (with a focus on Open Science) infographic mentioned in our inaugural blog post for this series. Randall Munroe [1] has previously summarized the progression of open science as a function of the scope of scientific output. The events and milestones for the featured historical overview were confirmed by internet search and synthesized from a survey of various tools and publications common in the field. This post characterizes the historical eras according to a developmental biology theme: from the embryo to developmental plasticity to an adult stage of life-history.

History of Open Access (1942-present), color-coded by historical era. Yellow: early, blue: transitional, green: contemporary. Click to enlarge. For a citable version and an alternate display type, please see [2].

1942-1999: Embryonic Ideas and Tools (early). Click to enlarge.

In the early period, there was an emergence of tools, ideas, and attempts to synthesize independent efforts. Early efforts such as the World Data System, MedLine, and Project Gutenberg served as inspiration for later efforts (particularly the development of MedLine into PubMed). Tools such as digital preprints (arXiv) and the internet (HTML, XML) served to provide the infrastructure of open science. Even tools such as Cyc (extraction of scientific rules from data) served to enable greater openness in the practice of science. The end of this era is marked by "Exploring the Development of the Independent, Electronic Scholarly Journal", a survey of open access journals in what coincides with the early internet era.

2000-2008: Institutional Plasticity (transitional). Click to enlarge.

The transitional period (or institutional plasticity) was a time for creating many of the institutions and established norms of the open science community. Many foundational ideas were either established (Creative Commons, digital object identifiers) or came to fruition (Human Genome Project) during this period. It is also of note that at least four declarations of practice were published during this period.

2009-present: A Juvenile No More! (contemporary). Click to enlarge.

The contemporary period has been defined by even more sophisticated tools (Altmetrics), quasi-historical summaries of past work for future development (Reinventing Discovery, The Future of OA), and the discussion of institutional standards at a greater level of specialization (FAIR Principles). This era is also marked by the use of open science to practice collaborative open science (Polymath Project), putting all of the pieces developed in previous eras into place.

NOTES:
[1] Munroe, R. (2013). The Rise of Open Access. Science, 342(6154), 58-59. doi:10.1126/science. 342.6154.58

[2] Alicea, B. (2019). History of Open Access Infographic. Figshare, doi:10.6084/m9.figshare. 9975713