
Petition Obama adminstration to require free access to publicly funded research - MikeTaylor
http://access2research.org/
======
MikeTaylor
Theres more background on this petition at [http://svpow.com/2012/05/21/help-
the-usa-into-the-21st-centu...](http://svpow.com/2012/05/21/help-the-usa-into-
the-21st-century-even-if-youre-not-american/) 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
[https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/!/petition/require-
fre...](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)

~~~
loevborg
Thanks. Does anyone have further information about the status of laws to
mandate open access in the EU?

~~~
MikeTaylor
The forthcoming EU mandate is not yet nailed down. The best information I've
seen so far is in this article in Times Higher Education:
[http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=...](http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=419949&c=1)

------
geoffschmidt
Direct link to petition:
[https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/!/petition/require-
fre...](https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/!/petition/require-free-access-
over-internet-scientific-journal-articles-arising-taxpayer-funded-
research/wDX82FLQ)

It only takes a minute to sign :)

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.

So if you sign only one online petition this year, make it this one.

~~~
wccrawford
I'd have signed, but after signing in, the button stays grey and I can't click
it. Click on the help links brings me to an 'under construction' page.
Clearing my cache and ctrl-reloading the page didn't help.

~~~
johnmmurray
I had this problem in FF, but not in Chrome. Maybe some redirect issue? Who
knows.

~~~
wccrawford
Maybe it's an issue with signing up. I started on Chrome, but moved to Safari
and it worked on Safari.

~~~
MikeTaylor
Thank you for persisting! I hope others don't have the same awkward experience
and give up.

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ck2
Please list any petitions that have resulted in changes in law?

Or are petitions just some way to keep people busy and feel like someone
cares?

~~~
MikeTaylor
This petition is being put together specifically in response to a meeting of
Open Access advocates with Obama's Science Advisor. This administration
understands the issue and wants to gauge the degree of public interest. In
short: while skepticism about petitions in general is warranted, this is one
that can make a real difference.

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kghose
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.

<http://publicaccess.nih.gov/>

~~~
MikeTaylor
Yes. But NIH is one of a dozen US Government departments that have research
budgets exceeding $100M per year. And so far it's the only one with a public-
access mandate.

~~~
jessriedel
The NIH has a budget of $30B, so it's not _just_ one of a dozen.

<http://www.nih.gov/about/budget.htm>

If I recall, it has _the_ largest research budget of any non-military US
government body by far.

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avar
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.

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?

~~~
roc
You have the philosophy right, but political reality has left that behind.

While the President doesn't have any official power over the legislating
process, he can wield significant political pressure as de facto head of his
party, via shaping public opinion from the bully pulpit and with the threat of
a veto.

Presidents have, for some time now, been very active in setting/driving
legislative priorities.

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delinquentme
Elsevier needs to burn. You want an awesome way to get a 10-20% increase in
research funds? Cut the fat.

~~~
cantankerous
I'm no Elsevier fan, but I think that number is a bit over the top. Most
Universities have site-wide access to pretty much any paper you can get your
hands on. I have a really hard time believing that 10-20% of research funding
feeds those journal databases.

~~~
crusso
It's not just about the costs to Elsevier. It's about the costs of keeping
information a secret that could have a much greater financial and societal
impact if it were unleashed.

This is the age of the individual contributor. Open Source has taught us all
about the power of appealing to and capturing the output of people working at
home, in small groups, at small startups, etc.

So this isn't so much about recapturing the piece of a fixed pie that Elsevier
takes. This is about making an incredibly larger pie by opening the
information up to a wider audience and allowing us to compound the benefits in
a much larger ecosystem.

~~~
MikeTaylor
Exactly! The real issue here is opportunity cost. Yes, we could have a much
cheaper academic publishing system if we did it without the paywalls and the
profiteering corporations. But that savings are as nothing compared with all
the new application avenues that will open up when research is freely
available.

------
orbenn
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.

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.

~~~
slowpoke
_> Or more precisely to maximize the speed at which we acquire
knowledge/technology._

Who do you mean by "we"? Because you certainly can not be referring to "we" as
in mankind. Locking away knowledge behind walls of bureaucracy and artificial
monopolies will certainly not speed up progress, but instead slowly grind it
to a halt.

Just look at the state of the patent wars. Everyone is suing each other, or
claiming to just collect patents to be able to counter-sue. Microsoft, Google,
Apple, and all the other big players probably each have patents on all
technologies all of them use, a good amount of those more than once and worded
as ridiculously over-general claims.

So if by "we" you are referring to the few dozen mega-corps that pretty much
control our shared heritage of knowledge, then yes, you are quite likely
correct.

If, on the other hand, you want to maximize the rate of technological
advancement for the "we" as in all of humanity, then embrace Open Access, get
rid of patents and all that other nonsense, and realize that incremental,
cooperative development will speed up progress by _magnitudes_.

------
greboun
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

~~~
MikeTaylor
The law in question is the FRPAA (Federal Research Public Access Act), and
it's a very fine thing: see [http://svpow.com/2012/02/10/d-day-going-on-the-
offensive-ove...](http://svpow.com/2012/02/10/d-day-going-on-the-offensive-
over-public-access/) on its importance and
<http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/action/FRPAA2012.shtml> for more details.

The current petition is a different strategy towards the same goal,
approaching the Whitehouse directly in the hope of catalysing a presidential-
level directive that would jump-start the process. (Not a speculative hope,
either -- relevant people have the ear of Obama's scientific advisor.)

------
anamax
How many journal articles are not just tweaks on conference papers and the
like that are already available on-line?

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.

Public access to data, that would be something.

~~~
MikeTaylor
This varies a lot between fields. In palaeontology, conference "papers" are
only 200-word abstracts with no illustrations or references, and are not
considered to be science. So papers are everything. I believe it's less
straightforward in maths, for example, where conferences are much more
important.

~~~
ethanwhite
It is the same in ecology - short abstracts, not considered peer reviewed,
never cited.

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ajays
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) ?

~~~
rhino42
Closest we got, imho, was Obama speaking in support of gay rights. They made a
pretty big deal of it in the petitions.

As far as I know, laws? nada

~~~
smsm42
Causal relationship between those petitions and Obama speaking in favor of gay
marriage is highly doubtful. Obama knew where the cards lie on this issue long
ago, and was waiting for an expedient moment to revert to the position he held
before he run for President. Now he decided such moment has arrived. I do not
think it has anything to do with any online petitions.

~~~
rhino42
Probably correct, I'm afraid to say :-(

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dkroy
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.

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dkelly
Should this be extended to books that are based on publicly funded research?

~~~
brodney
Just having the research available isn't the full investment in a book that
uses it. If the government further funds the book based on the research, maybe
that would be appropriate. If, however, I invest time and money into writing a
book that incorporates research, I'd want a return on that investment.

~~~
MikeTaylor
"I invest time and money into writing a book that incorporates research, I'd
want a return on that investment."

If you're an academic, you won't get it. The way academic publishing works is
that you do the research, write it up, prepare the illustrations, then sign
over copyright of the whole lot to a publisher such as Elsevier. They will
then publish the book, make a tidy profit, and pay you: nothing. Nothing at
all.

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febeling
I couldn't really find anything on the site on this, so the question: are non-
US citizens allowed to sign? If so, are they encouraged to sign?

~~~
MikeTaylor
Sorry for the slow response. Yes, non-US citizens absolutely are invited to
sign -- please do! (I did, and I am British.)

