[OKFN-IN] Fwd: [open-science] #OAMonday starts (for the Europeans) NOW! Requesting help from my open access / open science friends to make this happen.

Mon May 21 06:57:34 UTC 2012

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: William Gunn <william.gunn at gmail.com>
Date: 21 May 2012 11:18
Subject: [open-science] #OAMonday starts (for the Europeans) NOW!
Requesting help from my open access / open science friends to make this
happen.
To: open-science at lists.okfn.org, oahack at librelist.com

Please see the message from Cameron Neylon, Director of Advocacy at
PLoS, below. Note that anyone around the world can participate by
signing (not just another e-petition, but has guaranteed legislative
effect), and by sharing with others by blogging, tweeting, emailing,
putting a link up on your site or wiki, or otherwise getting the word
out to as many stakeholders as possible.  You don't need to be a
resident of the US. The link to use is: http://wh.gov/6TH

Thanks so much for your help. We need you to do what you can to make
open access to research a reality.

From: "cameronneylon.net" <cn at cameronneylon.net>
Date: 19 May 2012 19:59:01 CEST
Subject: Whitehouse Open Access petition kicking off Monday

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.

William Gunn
+1 646 755 9862
http://synthesis.williamgunn.org/about/

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