The Berlin Open Access Conference roared into life today, and this particular edition is significant in two fronts. Firstly, the conference is held on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the Berlin Declaration, and secondly, it was in Berlin where the 'Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities', was drawn by the Max Planck Society in October 2003, the current host of this present conference.

The conference's objective

This year's conference will provide an assessment of the role played by Open Access in scholarship and society today and highlights the benefits of increased Open Access.The meeting will also identify and debate the future challenges and the articulation of the goals associated with the vision of openness of scientific information and cultural heritage.

The two day deliberations will look at both open access publishing and open access archiving issues and the conference will take stock of these issues at a global level.The key futuristic talking point is how the current favourable legislative movements in United States of America, within the European Union (i.e the Horizon 2020) and elsewhere, would spur the developments of Open Access.

More information on http://www.berlin11.org/index.php/programm.html