This document is the transcript of the full text of the inspiring speech by the then Dutch State Secretary for Education, Culture and Science; Sander Dekker at the Academic Publishing Conference in Berlin in 2014. For Dekker, Open Access is a moral obligation, based on the principles of openness and democracy. It is a matter of principle that the whole of society should have access to the scientific knowledge for which it has paid for, which is essential and inescapable for its progress. Comparing Open Access to the Olympic idea, he remarked that ‘participation is not more important than victory, participation is victory’ and pleaded for the end of the pay wall in access to results of research.
Open Access, Knowledge, Creativity, Research, Economic Development, Social Progress, Democracy, Publishing, Berlin Declaration
