Fwd: Whitehouse Open Access petition kicking off Monday
Ant Beck
Some/all of you may be interested in this concerning Open Access to research material in the states. Please sign and distribute through your networks.
Best
A
-------- Original Message --------
| Subject: | Whitehouse Open Access petition kicking off Monday |
|---|---|
| Date: | Sat, 19 May 2012 18:59:01 +0100 |
| From: | cameronneylon.net <c...@cameronneylon.net> |
Dear All
I wouldn't normally send out a bulk email but there is a big
opportunity coming up to make real progress on expanding Open
Access to US Federally Funded Research and in turn to use that
momentum to move the agenda forward in the rest of the world.
There is a real possibility of action in the US but to achieve
this we need to demonstrate wide public support through a
petition on the Whitehouse website. The petition will go live
sometime on Sunday but we are aiming for a big publicity push to
draw attention to it on Monday. The Whitehouse makes a formal
response to these "We the People" petitions if they reach 25k
signatures within 30 days. Ideally we'd like to go way through
that number and as fast as possible to demonstrate the diversity
and depth of support.
Anything you are willing and able to do in terms of blogging,
tweeting, emailing or otherwise activating the networks of
people you are coupled into, particularly in the US, will make a
difference. Our aim is to hit the social media channels mid-late
morning in Europe on Monday and then to build momentum as the
sun rises across the US. Feel free to forward the information on
to people interested and advise people that the aim is to keep
the powder dry until Monday morning.
There is more detail below but any questions feel free to ping
me. I will send the URL for the petition as soon as I have it
but the overall site address is:
https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions
Cheers
Cameron
1. Petition Text (800 character limit)
WE PETITION THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TO:
Require free, timely access over the Internet to journal
articles arising from taxpayer-funded research.
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.
2. The Ask to Others
To sign the petition:
- Have to be 13 years or older
- Have to create an account on whitehouse.gov, https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions
- This first requires giving a name and an email
address and then clicking the validation link sent to that
address
- Click to sign the petition
3. Further Context
After years of work on promoting policy change to make
federally-funded research available on the Internet, and after
winning the battle to implement a public access policy at NIH,
it has become clear that being on the right side of the issue is
necessary but not sufficient. We've had the meetings, done the
hearings, replied to the requests for information.
But we're opposed in our work by a small set of publishers who
profit enormously from the existing system, even though there is
no evidence that the NIH policy has had any measurable impact on
their business models. They can - and do - outspend those of us
who have chosen to make a huge part of our daily work the
expansion of access to knowledge. This puts the idea of access
at a disadvantage. We know there is a serious debate about the
extension of public access to taxpayer funded research going on
right now in the White House, but we also know that we need more
than our current approaches to get that extension made into
federal policy.
The best approach that we have yet to try is to make a broad
public appeal for support, straight to the people. The Obama
Administration has created a web platform to petition the White
House directly called We The People. Any petition receiving more
than 25,000 digital signatures is placed on the desk of the
President's Chief of Staff and must be integrated into policy
and political discussions. But there's a catch - a petition only
has 30 days to gather the required number of signatures to
qualify.
We can get 25,000 signatures. And if we not only get 25,000, but
an order of magnitude more, we can change the debate happening
right now.
Next week we will publish our petition and the 30 day cycle
begins. What we're asking you to do is to leverage your personal
and professional networks to get the word out.
You can do this in any way that makes you feel comfortable. A
blog post, an email to constituencies, a tweet, a facebook
share, you name it - something that tells thousands of people
"I support this petition, I'm signing this petition, and I
thought you should know about it too." Because this isn't just
slacktivism with a "like" or a retweet - people need to go to
the White House website, enter their name and email address, and
hit the button.
Qualified signers must be 13 years old or more, and have a valid
email address. That's all.
The goal is not just to get 25,000, but to get far more to show
the White House that this issue matters to people, not just a
few publishers.
We are launching the campaign on Monday May 21. The petition
will go live late Sunday night May 20, so that the waves can
start in the EU and sweep west with the sunrise. We're asking
you to turn on your networks on Monday morning.
Thanks for considering this. If we can all come together to get
the word out at once, and stay behind it for 30 days, we have a
real chance to get access to taxpayer funded research across the
entire government, and send a signal that the people have a
voice in this debate, not just publishers and activists.
Ant Beck
This is not the case: "Qualified signers must be 13 years old or more, and have a valid email address. That's all."
There is no regional requirement :-) Which I think is appropriate - these stances have regional and global implications.
Best
A
On 21/05/12 09:45, Lieberwirth, Undine wrote:
Dear Ant
I would like to participate but I fear that Europeans cannot take part in a US petition?
Best wishes
Undine
"That, with our calculations to fail, we call a coincidence." Albert Einstein
_______________________________________________________________________________
Undine Lieberwirth M.A.
Excellence Cluster 264 - TOPOI
Administration
Co-ordination GIS and Databases
Free University Berlin
Hittorfstr. 18
14195 Berlin
Tel. +49 30 838 57275
Fax +49 30 838 53770
Email: undine.li...@fu-berlin.de
website: http://www.topoi.org
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