International petition in support of open access
A White House ‘We the People‘ petition has been posted to gather international support for open access to scholarly articles arising from publicly-funded research. If the petition receives 25,000 signatures in 30 days, the US Administration must issue an official response.
The petition to the Obama administration states:
“We believe in the power of the Internet to foster innovation, research, and education. Requiring the published results of taxpayer-funded research to be posted on the Internet in human and machine readable form would provide access to patients and caregivers, students and their teachers, researchers, entrepreneurs, and other taxpayers who paid for the research. Expanding access would speed the research process and increase the return on our investment in scientific research.
The highly successful Public Access Policy of the National Institutes of Health proves that this can be done without disrupting the research process, and we urge President Obama to act now to implement open access policies for all federal agencies that fund scientific research.”
Calls for action have appeared on Twitter with the tag #OAMonday, and on the morning of the petition’s launch (Monday 21 April 2012) over 500 signatures had already been added.
See the petition at https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/%21/petition/require-free-access-over-internet-scientific-journal-articles-arising-taxpayer-funded-research/wDX82FLQ
(requires a White House account to sign)