DigitalKoans

AALL, ALA, ACRL, the Alliance for Taxpayer Access, Public Knowledge, SPARC, and other organizations have initiated the Petition for Public Access to Publicly Funded Research in the United States.

The petition states:

We, the undersigned, believe that broad dissemination of research results is fundamental to the advancement of knowledge. For America’s taxpayers to obtain an optimal return on their investment in science, publicly funded research must be shared as broadly as possible. Yet too often, research results are not available to researchers, scientists, or the members of the public. Today, the Internet and digital technologies give us a powerful means of addressing this problem by removing access barriers and enabling new, expanded, and accelerated uses of research findings.

We believe the US Government can and must act to ensure that all potential users have free and timely access on the Internet to peer-reviewed federal research findings. This will not only benefit the higher education community, but will ultimately magnify the public benefits of research and education by promoting progress, enhancing economic growth, and improving the public welfare.

We support the re-introduction and passage of the Federal Research Public Access Act, which calls for open public access to federally funded research findings within six months of publication in a peer-reviewed journal.

The petition follows a similar effort in the European Union, the Petition for Guaranteed Public Access to Publicly-Funded Research Results, which was signed by over 23,000 individuals and organizations.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 14th, 2007 at 9:39 am and is filed under Open Access, Publishing, Scholarly Communication. Comments closed here. Read and add comments at http://www.digital-scholarship.org/digitalkoans/.