The Open Archives Initiative (OAI) promotes "interoperability standards that aim to facilitate the efficient dissemination of content." It develops protocols for accessing e-print archives in order to increase the availability of scholarly communication (such as the Open Archives Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH). For more information, see http://www.openarchives.org

An important application of the Open Archives Initiative has been the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).