# 6355
It sounds like a no-brainer.
If tens of billions of our tax dollars are used each year to to fund scientific research, then the results of that research should be published in an open-access journal – not printed in expensive subscription-only access journals.
But unless the U.S. government funds came from the NIH, there are currently no rules compelling open access publishing of government funded research.
And even NIH funded research isn’t always immediately available to the public that paid for it.
. . . ensures that the public has access to the published results of NIH funded research. It requires scientists to submit final peer-reviewed journal manuscripts that arise from NIH funds to the digital archive PubMed Central upon acceptance for publication.
To help advance science and improve human health, the Policy requires that these papers are accessible to the public on PubMed Central no later than 12 months after publication.
There is a grass-roots movement afoot spearheaded by access2research.org to get the Whitehouse to direct that all government funded research be made available to the people who paid for it – the public – and a petition that you can sign that will help.
Right now, there are just over 20,000 signatures, and the goal of at least 25,000 petitioners before June 19th is within reach. But the more signers, the stronger the message it will send.
So if you haven’t already, consider going to the Whitehouse.gov’s petition site, and adding your voice.
For more background on this issue, access2research has produced this brief video.
Today PLoS Medicine ran an editorial supporting this petition in their Speaking of Medicine Blog (Public Access to Publicly Funded Research By Michael Morris) and last week one of my favorite bloggers – David Dobbs at Neuron Culture, penned:
Open-Science Geeks Invite Obama Onto Roller Coaster
By David Dobbs May 25, 2012 |
You’ll find a long list of additional press coverage of this movement on the access2research press page, but a few recent examples include:
Nature News: White House Petitioned To Make Research Free To Access
Wired Blogs | Neuron Culture: Open Science Geeks Invite Obama Onto Roller Coaster
Open and Shut? The People’s Petition (Richard Poynder)
GOOD Magazine: Help Make Publicly Funded Science Free To The Public
Whether this petition will have the desired effect, I have no way of knowing.
But if you feel that government funded research shouldn’t be held hostage by pay-to-view journals, it is certainly worth a shot.
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