Group of Eight (Australia)- the Group of Eight vice-chancellors, representing Australia's pre-eminent research universities, record their commitment to open access initiatives that will enhance global access to scholarly information for the public good.

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.

Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities - adopted at the conference on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities, 20-22 Oct 2003, Berlin.

Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing - a document drafted during a meeting on April 11, 2003 at the headquarters of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Chevy Chase, Maryland, in order to stimulate discussion on open access within the biomedical research community.

HHMI Public Access Policy- issued by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) in June, 2007, the policy requires the HHMI's scientists to publish their original research articles in scientific journals that allow the articles and supplementary materials to be made freely accessible in a public repository within six months of publication.

IFLA Statement on open access to scholarly literature and research documentation- a statement adopted by the Governing Board of IFLA (the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions) at its meeting in The Hague on 5th December 2003.

OECD Committee for Scientific and Technological Policy: Declaration on Access to Research Data from Public Funding- a declaration on access to research data from public funding, issued in January, 2004, by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), an international organization that focuses on fostering good governance in the public service and in corporate activity.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Policy on Enhancing Public Access to Archived Publications Resulting from NIH-Funded Research (Public Access Policy), May 2, 2005.- "...requests and strongly encourages all investigators to make their NIH-funded peer-reviewed, author's final manuscript available to other researchers and the public through the NIH National Library of Medicine's (NLM) PubMed Central (PMC) immediately after the final date of journal publication."

Open Letter to the U.S. Congress Signed by 26 Nobel Prize Winners (July 8, 2007)- expresses strong support for the House Appropriations Committee's directive to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) that requires the NIH Public Access Policy to be made mandatory.

Washington D.C. principles for free access to science- the principles outlining the commitment of not-for-profit publishers to providing free access and wide dissemination of research findings. March 16, 2004.

Wellcome Trust Position Statement in Support of Open Access Publishing - a statement by the Wellcome Trust, a UK-based major "independent charity funding research to improve human and animal health," to support "open and unrestricted access to the published output of research, including the open access model . . . as a fundamental part of its charitable mission and a public benefit to be encouraged wherever possible."