Open access leaders

The open access movement began in the late 1990s in biomedical sciences as a response to increasing journal cost, which priced many individual and institutional subscribers out of access to the latest research studies. There are two initiatives that are in the center of the open access movement:
BioMed Central (BMC) and the Public Library of Science (PLoS).

BioMed Central (BMC), a UK based publishing house, provides immediate and open access to full-text of research articles published in its 100+ online journals covering all areas of biology and medicine. More...

Public Library of Science (PLoS), a California non-profit group of bioscientists formed in 2000, publishes two online peer-reviewed journals: PLoS Biology and PLoS Medicine. More ...

Other open access initiatives that deserve special attention:

PubMed Central (PMC), an open access digital repository at the National Institutes of Health.

Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI), a series of principles for promoting and maintaining open access developed at a Meeting of the Academies of Sciences in Budapest, January 2003.

Budapest
Open Access Initiative

Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), "an alliance of universities, research libraries, and organizations built as a constructive response to market dysfunctions in the scholarly communication system."

Oxford University Press (OUP) announced that the Nucleic Acids Research (NAR), one of the most important OUP journals, has adopted an open access publishing model in Janurary 2005.

Springer, a publisher of 1,250 scientific journals, has taken a step towards open access by offering its authors the Springer Open Choice model.