The BOAI Declaration states that scholarly literature from all disciplines should be openly and freely accessible in order to disseminate to and have an impact on the world. The declaration states that scholarly journal literature can be made openly accessible through self-archiving by scholars and by scholars publishing in Open Access journals.

Further, the declaration

- Calls for support of Open Access to knowledge and cultural heritage

- Defines what Open Access contributions should consist of

- Recommends the depositing of a complete version of the work and all supplemental materials in electronic format in an online repository

- Calls for researchers, grant recipients, and cultural heritage organizations to support Open Access to their works

- Advocates for the development of methods to maintain quality and good scientific practice for Open Access publications

- Recommends the consideration of Open Access publication

Much like the Berlin Declaration, the authors of the Bethesda Statement hold that creators/license-holders of works should make their works free, available worldwide, available for public display, and allow for derivatives--but subject to author attribution and including supplemental materials, such as metadata. The Bethesda Statement also supports long-term archiving of works, such as that done by PubMed Central, is essential.

Pitt was a signatory of the Tempe Principles