[open-government] Fwd: [sparc open data] Call to Action: Support the Bipartisan Federal Public Access Act

Tue Feb 14 14:07:57 UTC 2012

I thought there might be some people from the US on the list who would
be interested in this issue.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Andrea Higginbotham <andrea at arl.org>
Date: Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 5:41 PM
Subject: [sparc open data] Call to Action: Support the Bipartisan
Federal Public Access Act
To: SPARC Open Data <sparc-opendata at arl.org>

We have just posted an important, new call to action asking you to
support the Federal Research Public Access Act
(http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/issues/frpaa/frpaa_action/FRPAA2012.shtml).
This is a bipartisan bill introduced last week in the U.S. Senate (S.
2096) and House of Representatives (H.R. 4004) that would make all US
government funded research freely available within 6 months of
publication in a peer-reviewed journal.  Our call to action includes
action items, background, talking points, and resources, and links to
our legislative action center where people can write their
representatives directly.

We currently have a unique opportunity to create change. The Research
Works Act (H.R. 3699), a piece of legislation introduced in December
that would ban the government from providing the public access to
publicly funded research, has galvanized the research community into
acting against practices that restrict access to research articles –
reaching the pages of the Economist, the New York Times, Wired, the
Guardian, the Boston Globe, Slate, and the Chronicle of Higher
Education.

The publishers of the two most prestigious scientific journals,
Science and Nature, have not only opposed the Research Works Act
publicly but also endorsed the National Institutes of Health public
access policy, which FRPAA would extend to the other federal science
agencies.

With reinvigorated support from the research community and attention
from the mainstream media, now is the time to push for this
groundbreaking legislation and let the US Congress know that the
public deserves access to the research which they paid for.

Your help in distributing our call to action to your members and
relevant email lists is much appreciated.

Best,

Andrea

Andrea Brusca Higginbotham

Communications Manager, SPARC

21 Dupont Circle, Suite 800

Washington, DC 20036

(202) 296-2296 ext 121

andrea at arl.org

www.arl.org/sparc

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-- 
Tracey P. Lauriault
613-234-2805

"Every epoch dreams the one that follows it's the dream form of the
future, not its reality" it is the "wish image of the collective".

Walter Benjamin, between 1927-1940,
(http://www.columbia.edu/itc/architecture/ockman/pdfs/dossier_4/buck-morss.pdf)