The open access to scientific literature aims to provide free access to research results, without compromising quality. Several public funding agencies have open access policies, requesting that the data and the results of publicly funded research are made accessible to all.
The open access movement is currently transforming the world of scientific publishing. It has picked up some momentum with the rising cost of subscription to scholarly journals for academic libraries. Considering that they are publicly funded, university libraries must nowadays re-evaluate and sometimes even cancel subscriptions to some scholarly journals, thus reducing access to the results of scientific research.