[Open-access] access2research - help spread the word!

[Jenny Molloy]

Dear open-access

Please see a message from John Wilbanks and the access2research team below
- they are aiming to generate a big splash this Monday and you may have got
an inkling of what was coming through #OAMonday tweets, but it's arrived
and they need your help!

This message contains info on social media links and handles so do make use
of them if you can and get the word out there.

Best wishes

Jenny

--------------------------------------------------------------

On *Monday, May 21*, we lodge a petition on the White House’s “We the
People” page asking the Obama administration to require that all federally
funded research be posted on the Web – extending the principle of the NIH
policy to all federal agencies.

1. What We’re Asking

· Publicity/ Call for Participation.  Please help line up publicity for the
petition before Monday.  Specifically, can you help get it on the front
pages of Reddit, Tumblr, Wikipedia, Boing Boing, and send out an
all-hands-on-deck request through your own blogs/twitter feeds, etc?

· 25,000 signatures in 30 days gets an official Administration response.
 We want to hit that number fast to escalate this issue inside the White
House.  We believe the policy has support but is stuck.  This could well be
the event that gets it through.

· Please sign the petition on Monday.

2. Social Media links/handles

The official campaign website is at http://access2research.org and there
are already Facebook pages
(http://facebook.com/**access2research<http://facebook.com/access2research>)
and Twitter handles (@access2research) in place.

3. Petition Text (800 character limit)

WE PETITION THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TO: [This doesn't count toward the
character count]

Require free 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 would give access to entrepreneurs, researchers,
patients, caregivers, and students, who currently are blocked by high
costs. We know this works without disturbing the process of scientific
publishing because the National Institutes of Health is already doing it
through its highly successful Public Access Policy. All other federal
agencies that fund research should have similar policies.

President Obama, please act now to make federally-funded research freely
available to taxpayers on the Internet.

4. The Ask to Others

To sign the petition:

-   Have to be 13 years or older
-   Have to create an account on whitehouse.gov, which requires giving a
name and an email address and then clicking the validation link sent to
that address
-   Click to sign

5. 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.
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