Definition of Open Access

Budapest Open Access Initiative define Open Access as: "By 'open access' to literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited."  

Berlin statement define Open Access as: “For a work to be Open Access, the copyright holder must consent in advance to let users copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship...."

ITECH view of Open Access

Removing access barriers: Internet connection is the only requirement. To search INRA database you do not even need to register.
Removing price and time barriers: All ITECH articles are accessible in full length immediately on publication free of charge.
Removing permission barriers: No ridiculous copyright transfer agreements to sign. Authors have to declare (1) that they have intellectual property over the submitted article, (2) that the submitted article is not copyrighted by third parity, and (3) author give us the permission to publish their work in all INRA publications and derivative products. After publishing of the article copyright is still owned by the author. 

Others on Open Access

The Access Principle, The Case for Open Access to Research and Scholarship
By John Willinsky, MIT Press 
http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?tid=10611&ttype=2

Open Access Overview 
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm

An Open Letter to the U.S. Congress Signed by 25 Nobel Prize Winners 
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/991.html

Stevan Harnad, Chaire de Recherche du Canada, Université du Québec à Montréal, Montréal, Québec, Canada 
Comparing the Impact of Open Access (OA) vs. Non-OA Articles in the Same Journal

Budapest Open Access Initiative 
http://www.soros.org/openaccess/

Online or Invisible?
By Steve Lawrence, NEC Research Institute 
http://ivyspring.com/steveLawrence/SteveLawrence.htm

Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities
http://oa.mpg.de/openaccess-berlin/berlindeclaration.html

In Oldenburg's Long Shadow: 
Librarians, Research Scientists, Publishers, and the Control of Scientific Publishing 
By Jean-Claude Guédon, Université de Montréal, Canada
http://www.arl.org/arl/proceedings/138/guedon.html