Public
SPARC and ATA ask White House to match OA developments in UK and Europe
From Heather Joseph, on behalf of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) and the Alliance for Taxpayer Access (ATA), to President Obama, July 18, 2012:
"I am writing to call your attention to two crucial developments earlier this week in the global effort to enable public access to the results of taxpayer-funded scientific research....Yesterday, the European Commission (EC) announced its intention to open up access to all of its research findings – scientific articles as well as data – funded by its $98 billion research-funding program, Horizon 2020. The EC will require researchers to either publish articles reporting on their results in scientific journals that do not charge users subscription fees to access and reuse articles (“Open Access” journals), or to deposit their articles into freely accessible, digital repositories no later than six months after publication (or 12 months for social science and humanities research). Just as important, the EC is urging member states to follow its lead, and to implement and enforce similar policies for their domestic research. The EC’s policy bears a striking resemblance to a national Open Access policy announced by the United Kingdom earlier this week. The Research Councils UK (RCUK)...issued a policy requiring researchers to make all articles reporting on RCUK-funded research openly accessible under conditions that are nearly identical to that of the EC....This approach is rapidly becoming the default mode for countries that want to retain a competitive advantage in R & D, in science, and in the translation of ideas into new products and services. Yet in the US, only one of our eleven major agencies and departments that fund major scientific research – the National Institutes of Health (NIH) – has a policy ensuring this kind of public access to its results....Your Administration has a unique opportunity...to unlock this information – by acting on the request of the more than 28,000 individuals who took the time to sign the recent “We the People Petition” calling for the expansion of the NIH’s successful Public Access Policy to all other US federal science agencies. The signers of this petition are representative of the millions of Americans, including patients and their families, health care professionals, researchers, entrepreneurs, and business owners, who would directly benefit from guaranteed, free online access to articles reporting on the results of research that their tax dollars support...."
#oa #openaccess
From Heather Joseph, on behalf of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) and the Alliance for Taxpayer Access (ATA), to President Obama, July 18, 2012:
"I am writing to call your attention to two crucial developments earlier this week in the global effort to enable public access to the results of taxpayer-funded scientific research....Yesterday, the European Commission (EC) announced its intention to open up access to all of its research findings – scientific articles as well as data – funded by its $98 billion research-funding program, Horizon 2020. The EC will require researchers to either publish articles reporting on their results in scientific journals that do not charge users subscription fees to access and reuse articles (“Open Access” journals), or to deposit their articles into freely accessible, digital repositories no later than six months after publication (or 12 months for social science and humanities research). Just as important, the EC is urging member states to follow its lead, and to implement and enforce similar policies for their domestic research. The EC’s policy bears a striking resemblance to a national Open Access policy announced by the United Kingdom earlier this week. The Research Councils UK (RCUK)...issued a policy requiring researchers to make all articles reporting on RCUK-funded research openly accessible under conditions that are nearly identical to that of the EC....This approach is rapidly becoming the default mode for countries that want to retain a competitive advantage in R & D, in science, and in the translation of ideas into new products and services. Yet in the US, only one of our eleven major agencies and departments that fund major scientific research – the National Institutes of Health (NIH) – has a policy ensuring this kind of public access to its results....Your Administration has a unique opportunity...to unlock this information – by acting on the request of the more than 28,000 individuals who took the time to sign the recent “We the People Petition” calling for the expansion of the NIH’s successful Public Access Policy to all other US federal science agencies. The signers of this petition are representative of the millions of Americans, including patients and their families, health care professionals, researchers, entrepreneurs, and business owners, who would directly benefit from guaranteed, free online access to articles reporting on the results of research that their tax dollars support...."
#oa #openaccess