[open-archaeology] Whitehouse Open Access petition kicking off Monday

Sat May 19 19:09:47 UTC 2012

Dear All,

This just came through from Cameron. Please sign and re-post.

Best

A

On 19/05/12 18:59, cameronneylon.net wrote:

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.

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