Theres more background on this petition at <a href="http://svpow.com/2012/05/21/help-the-usa-into-the-21st-century-even-if-youre-not-american/" rel="nofollow">http://svpow.com/2012/05/21/help-the-usa-into-the-21st-centu...</a> for those who want it. The TL;DR is that the UK and the European Union are introducing long overdue mandates that all publicly funded research must be publicly accessible. At the moment, the USA has no concrete plans to do the same, but Open Access advocates have the ear of Obama's scientific advisor and think there's a good chance this could make it provided that we the people show it's an issue we care about. So please sign the Whitehouse.org petition at <a href="https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/!/petition/require-free-access-over-internet-scientific-journal-articles-arising-taxpayer-funded-research/wDX82FLQ?utm_source=wh.gov&utm_medium=shorturl&utm_campaign=shorturl" rel="nofollow">https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/!/petition/require-fre...</a>
Direct link to petition:
<a href="https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/!/petition/require-free-access-over-internet-scientific-journal-articles-arising-taxpayer-funded-research/wDX82FLQ" rel="nofollow">https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/!/petition/require-fre...</a><p>It only takes a minute to sign :)<p>Most political petitions have no impact. They are just email-gathering campaigns. This one is different: it's on the Whitehouse site and it's not for gathering emails, it's to give Open Access advocates some political cover as they craft their proposal.<p>So if you sign only one online petition this year, make it this one.
Any research funded by the NIH has to be made publicly available within 12 months after publication. The papers have to be deposited with PubMed.<p><a href="http://publicaccess.nih.gov/" rel="nofollow">http://publicaccess.nih.gov/</a>
I'm not from the US and I don't have a lot of knowledge about US law, but it seems strange to me that the executive branch of the government is hosting petitions for what in most other countries would fall under the legislature.<p>Isn't it the task of Congress in the US to set policy about what requirements are attached to the expenditure of public money, does the executive branch really have any impact on stuff like this?
A lot of people assume that making all research that included federal grant money free to the public would be unilaterally good. I like the idea in general because I actually like to read scientific papers sometimes, but my primary interest is to maximize the amount of research that happens. Or more precisely to maximize the speed at which we acquire knowledge/technology.<p>Are there any existing examples of places where this has been put into practice that we can compare to see which state of affairs is better? I'm unsure it would be beneficial because most of the public wouldn't read/understand the actual journal articles anyway, and I expect most of the scientists who do work in the field already have subscriptions. I'm worried there might be harm because government mandates of all kinds very often have negative unintended consequences and I'm curious what those might be for this area.
As far as I know the EU has decided that all research resulting from its 80 billion research funding program must be published open access. The US doesn't have this yet but there is a law in preparation to do just this for US government funded research. A petition might speed things up
How many journal articles are not just tweaks on conference papers and the like that are already available on-line?<p>This is a serious question. Back when I was seriously tracking a couple of areas, I didn't care at all about journals because they were about a year behind.<p>Public access to data, that would be something.
I've signed it, but I have a general question: has there been any petition on the WH site which has resulted in significant change (like a new law being submitted to Congress by the WH, or a new directive being issued) ?
I signed it, that only makes sense If the public is going to fund it, then they should be able to see the research. To be honest, I didn't even know that publicly funded research wasn't all public.