 What is the role of Budapest in open access generally?
Shifting from isolated computers to a globe-spanning network of connected computers suddenly allows us to share perfect copies of our work with a worldwide audience at essentially no cost. In any case, we can be more specific about which access barriers OA removes. OA was defined in three influential public statements: the Budapest Open Access Initiative (February 2002), the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing (June 2003), and the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities (October 2003). Here’s how the Budapest statement defined OA: There are many degrees and kinds of wider and easier access to [research] literature. If there are complexities, they lie in the transition from where we are now to a world in which OA is the default for new research. This is complicated because the major obstacles are not technical, legal, or economic, but cultural. In principle, any kind of digital content can be OA, since any digital content can be put online without price or permission barriers. This peculiar custom does more than insulate cutting-edge research from the market and free scholars to consent to OA without losing revenue. It frees researchers to challenge conventional wisdom and defend unpopular ideas, which are essential to academic freedom. It’s a payment structure we need for good research itself, not just for good access to research, and it’s the key to the legal and economic lock that would otherwise shackle steps toward OA.
 It happens to be one city that hosted an early meeting about these issues
 Most of the scholars in this city tend to publish in OA journals, which means they have pull on the policies  It happens to be one city that hosted an early meeting about these issues  It is the location of the headquarters of the company that oversees OA publishing  Most of the decisions about OA policies are made in meetings hosted there