The Open Access (OA) Map , launched today during the CERN Workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communication (OAI7), displays the locations of all types of OA-related initiatives, including funding policies, government documents, university mandates and so on. Much of this information already exists but it is scattered across domains.

The Map can be used for OA education training and advocacy and should be extremely valuable in informing different constituencies, including policymakers and legislators, about the progress of OA in simple, clear and easily usable ways.

The Map can also serve as a networking tool, something that has the potential to facilitate and catalyse additional, new and innovative OA developments across the world. This is something new. No other service has attempted to bring information together in this way to provide a tool for networking on this scale.

The Open Access Map is an initiative of Open Society Foundation, EnablingOpenScholarship (EOS), EIFL and SPARC.