The Chairman of the Italian National Research Council (CNR), Luigi Nicolais has signed up to the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities (Berlin Declaration) which represents the European "charter" governing adherence to open access to research materials funded by public moneys. 

With this agreement, the CNR commits to ensuring maximum access to national information resulting from research activities carried out by the Institution: research results will be communicated not simply via traditional publication methods, but also by means of new open information tools, information and communication technological means, which enables easy flourishing of the open access principles.

“The Berlin Declaration defines open access as a strategy which is essential to ensure the communication and reuse of research from the scientific sector and civil society" confirms the Chairman, Nicolais. "Current economic and financial conditions which countries like Italy find themselves in, force scientific and academic institutions to make that extra effort to fully and immediately enable results and national knowledge to be usable, that gathered by means of scientific and technological processes”. The implementation of the principles governing open access to research materials may, undoubtedly, lead to cultural and economic growth of countries".

Those who have signed the Berlin Declaration commit, in addition, to encourage researchers and other scientific institutions, who benefit from public financing, to use open access channels and immediately circulate their research activity results. "Signing up to the Berlin Declaration", concludes Nicolais, "will enable CNR to fully penetrate the context in which the most significant institutions, actively working with open access policies and strategies, putting into practice that recommended by European institutions, are found".