This definition of Open Access publishing comes from a meeting of the biomedical community held on April 11, 2003 in Bethesda, Maryland, and is commonly referred to as the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing. It is composed of two clauses, one concerning copyright and the other concerning archival copies and access: An Open Access Publication is one that meets the following two conditions:
1) The author(s) and copyright holder(s) grant(s) to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship, as well as the right to make small numbers of printed copies for their personal use.
2) A complete version of the work and all supplemental materials, including a copy of the permission as stated above, in a suitable standard electronic format is deposited immediately upon initial publication in at least one online repository that is supported by an academic institution, scholarly society, government agency, or other well-established organization that seeks to enable open access, unrestricted distribution, interoperability, and long-term archiving (for the biomedical sciences, PubMed Central is such a repository).
The two methods of open access for enhanced dissemination of scholarship are:
1) publish in open access journals
2) deposit versions of articles and other work in repositories (Example: PubMed Central or PMC)
The NIH Public Access Policy ensures that the public has access to the published results of NIH funded research. It requires scientists to submit final peer-reviewed journal manuscripts that arise from NIH funds to the digital archive PubMed Central immediately upon acceptance for publication. To help advance science and improve human health, the Policy requires that these papers are accessible to the public on PubMed Central no later than 12 months after publication.