Image: Wkimedia Commons/Daniel Schwen
From Nature magazine
More than 17,000 people have signed an online petition urging US President Barack Obama to require all scientific journal articles resulting from US taxpayer-funded research to be made freely available online. The signatures, obtained within a week of the petition's launch after an active social media campaign, put it over two-thirds of the way towards the threshold that will require an official response from the White House.
It comes as the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) — one of the largest biomedical institutions in the United States — becomes the latest institution to require its researchers to make their articles freely available in an open-access repository. However, they can opt out if it brings them into conflict with publishers. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and various Harvard University schools are among those with similar policies in place.
The petition, on the White House website, was launched by Access2Research, a group of four open-access advocates who were frustrated by the lack of progress on the issue and so are trying a new tack. The petition urges the president to “act now to implement open access policies for all federal agencies that fund scientific research”.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, is the only US government agency that requires researchers to deposit their articles in the agency's PubMed Central online archive within 12 months of publication, a policy that followed a bill passed by Congress in 2007. It is estimated that about 90,000 papers are deposited each year, with half a million people accessing the database of 2.4 million papers each day.
Getting the ball rolling
“We know the NIH policy works to provide public access and there have been no data presented that it hurts publishers’ revenues, so we are asking for that policy to be extended,” says John Wilbanks, a senior fellow at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City, Missouri, and one of the four people spearheading the petition.
The proposed extension would see open-access polices cover all 12 federal-science agencies, including the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, NASA, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Agriculture. The petition does not stipulate a time period within which articles should be deposited or a particular repository, to give agencies flexibility, Wilbanks says.
The agencies together receive about US$60 billion in federal research dollars each year, with about half going to the NIH, so the number of papers available annually could double under the proposal, says Heather Joseph, another petition leader and executive director of the pro-open access Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, based in Washington DC.
Assuming the petition tops 25,000 signatures before 19 June, there must be an official response from the administration. “It at least puts the issue in front of the president's staff for consideration. The response could be as weak as a simple acknowledgement, or as strong as a policy statement or directive”, such as an executive order telling agencies to expand the NIH policy, Joseph adds.
The timing of the petition is no accident. A bipartisan bill — the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA) 2012 — that advocates extending the NIH policy to other federal agencies, and shortening the time frame in which papers must be deposited from 12 months to 6, is making its way through Congress. The White House is also currently reviewing its open-access policies.
“We want the White House to state its position because it could get the ball rolling with agencies, and we want FRPAA because it is much harder to overturn,” says Joseph.
See what we're tweeting about
6 Comments
Add CommentTo read and/or sign the petition, click here: http://wh.gov/6TH
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe White House has nothing to say about the matter. National security laws (which translates to publishers and other big business profits) will trump the administrative branch if the president tries to do this. This matter needs to be brought before congress and we all know how anti-science the House of Representatives is lately. They won't even force the fracking industry to tell us what they are dumping in our air and water so scientist can determine if it is safe for the environment.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnyone who still believes this country is run by the people is deluding themselves.
Things as MedLine and Entrez Pubmed are a much more than sufficient contribution for spreading science, and there are its equivalents in other technological fields, but nobody can expect somebody giving access to their last technology research lines or achievements, this will be not only giving your work for free, but giving an strenght to the competitors that ultimately can put companies at home out of the global market and into bankruptcy. Industry is far for being a war, but it must be considered that you can feed your enemy, but not give him/her more weapons or more aggression power that can be used against you and your friends. USA is more generous in spreading science than many can even imagine.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisInformation is information. There is nothing right or wrong about it, however like all resources, in the right or wrong hands it can be constructively or destructively. All of you here delude yourselves into thinking that the government is at fault but you are clearly mistaken.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA gun for example is nothing, but put into the hands of someone who will shoot, it becomes an agent of defense or offense depending on the perspective of the user. In the end what we call "evil" is the obstruction for all to live freely and "pursue happiness".
In this case, there is in fact nothing to suggest that anyone would abuse this information, but at the same time there is no evidence to suggest they will not. Actually scratch that, we have history, the history of humanity and everything points to the systematic abuse of power.
There is no denying that our government is incredibly flawed at the present, and it is heavily influenced by people with money. There is also no denying that this information would be vastly beneficial to the populace pursuing progress and knowledge. However there is also no denying that for all the "good" there is the equivalent of that in "evil".
Just because you are not in positions that are difficult, and you fail to weigh the pro's and con's does not give you the authority to assume that you are correct. Every decision a person in authority makes affects the people for whom he has made the decision, and one wrong step is his responsibility. So please, if you will "frack" off.
This petition is for publicly funded research. Private companies can still keep their research private, as long as they have not used government funding.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think if the American people pay for research, they should have access to the results of that research.
FYI - the petition at the White House site has already passed the 25,000 signatures required to necessitate a response by the WH. See it at http://wh.gov/6TH
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this