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

[Mike Taylor]

Those of you with Reddit or Hacker News accounts, please upvote the
access2science posts:
        http://www.reddit.com/r/sciencepolicy/comments/txbqp/petition_the_obama_administration_to_require_free/
        http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4002152

Those of you with Slashdot accounts, please submit a story about this
petition.  (I've sent one, but each individual submission has only a
small chance of making it through the editorial filter, so the more
the merrier.)

-- Mike.


On 21 May 2012 12:25, Jenny Molloy <jenny.molloy at okfn.org> wrote:
> 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) 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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