According to BOAIthe concept of Ope

According to BOAIthe concept of Open Access refers to "[the] free availability on the public internet,
permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these
articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful
purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining
access to the internet itself" (BOAI, 2002).
The Bethesda Statement (2003) defines open access, where "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".
The Guru of Open Access Harnad (2008) has described the characteristics of Open Access.
"Information, which is Free, immediate, permanent, full-text, on-Line and accessible". Harnad suggests
three main justifications of OA: "to maximise the uptake, usage, applications and impact of the
research output of your university; to measure and reward the uptake, usage, applications and impact
of the research output of your university (research metrics) and, to collect, manage and showcase a
permanent record of the research output and impact of your university".
Peter Suber (2010) describes, "Open-access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free
of most copyright and licensing restrictions". Suber also states that open access contents are not
restricted only to peer-reviewed research articles, they can be in any formats from texts and data to
software, audio, video, and multi-media. Although the OA movement focuses on peer-reviewed
research articles and their preprints, OA can also apply to non-scholarly content, like music, movies,
and novels, even if these are not the focus of most OA activists (Suber, 2010). Suber's definition is
broad, it goes beyond scholarly publications.
Thus, Open Access has the following characteristics:
It is free availability of scholarly publication.
It is free of copyright and licensing restrictions
Materials are available online or on the internet.
Material is full text.
Material can be accessed by anybody from anywhere without any discrimination.
Material can be freely used by anyone.
Open Access contents can be in any format from texts and data to software, audio, video, and
multi-media, scholarly articles and their preprints.