Budapest Open Archives Initiative (Soros Foundation), two recommended strategies to achieve open access to scholarly journal literature, February 14th 2002: http://www.soros.org/openaccess/

Berlin Declaration on the Open Access to knowledge in science and the humanities: October 2003, a Declaration signed by over 60 major institutions, universities, funding organisations and other interested bodies committed to open access to scholarly publications. Report of follow-up meeting on February 2005: http://www.eprints.org/berlin3/ May 2005 the following organisations signed the Berlin Declaration: The UK Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), and the Universities of Amsterdam, Leiden, Utrecht, Delft University of Technology and Wageningen.

Wellcome Trust Statement in support of Open Access: Published in October 2003: http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_WTD002766.html. A recent statement (May 2005) specifies precise requirements for making papers arising from Wellcome grants open access: http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_WTX025191.html

UK Research Councils (RCUK) announces support for Open Access archiving, June 28th 2005
http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/press/20050628openaccess.asp

CERN confirms its commitment to Open Access, March 2005: http://info.web.cern.ch/Press/PressReleases/Releases2005/PR04.05E.html

UNESCO adopts Amendments to the Draft Programme and Budget for 2006-2007 that have the effect of endorsing OA, September 22 2005 UNESCO http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0014/001408/140864e.pdf

The Case for Institutional Repositories: A SPARC Position Paper, July 2002 - prepared by Raym Crow: http://www.arl.org/sparc/IR/IR_final_release-102.pdf

Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing: the outcome of a meeting of research organisations to agree on steps to be taken to support the transition to open access publishing: http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/bethesda.htm

Scotland declaration in support of Open Access: 20 institutions in Scotland have already signed the October 2004 Declaration: http://scurl.ac.uk/WG/OATS/declaration.htm

Finland has made a nation-wide commitment to Open Access by partnership with BioMedCentral: http://www.news-medical.net/?id=1411

Salvador Declaration on Open Access: The Developing World Perspective: September 2005
http://www.icml9.org/meetings/openaccess/public/documents/declaration.htm

Public Library of Science
Statement signed by just under 30,000 individuals from 175 countries who support the concept of open access: http://www.publiclibraryofscience.org/

U K Government Science & Technology Committee recommendations on science publishing: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/39903.htm

University Developments
(many universities are developing OA Archives, but the following have made policy announcements)

University of Namibia sets up Institutional Archive and defines Open Access policy: http://www.unam.na/ilrc/library/oai.htm

University of Southampton to make all its academic and scientific research output freely available
http://www.soton.ac.uk/Press/PressReleases/Name,4966,en.php

Universities in Netherlands set up repositories: http://www.darenet.nl/en/page/language.view/repositories and Cream of Science with 40,000 primary research publications: http://www.creamofscience.org/en/page/language.view/keur.page

Cornell University Faculty Senate Endorses Resolution on Open Access and Scholarly Communication adopts open access resolution: http://www.library.cornell.edu/scholarlycomm/resolution.html

Case Western Reserve Resolution on Open Access - report that contains draft resolution that was signed by all bar one: :http://www.case.edu/president/facsen/frames/committees/library/LibraryComReport.pdf

Tools / Directories

Open Archives Initiative (OAI),
Development of standard protocol (Open Archives Metadata Harvesting Protocol, OAMHP): http://www.openarchives.org/

Register of Open Access Archives - shows numbers and kinds of records in 438 archives
http://archives.eprints.org/

Directory of Open Access Journals
http://www.doaj.org

SHERPA Project - developing Open Access repositories in research universities, plus other OA resources

http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/

OpenDOAR - provides a comprehensive and authoritative list of institutional and subject-based repositories, as well as archives set up by funding agencies
http://www.opendoar.org/