The movement to make taxpayer-funded research freely available online hit a new milestone on June 3 when advocates hit their goal of 25,000 signatures to a ‘We the People’ petition to the Obama administration. The petition, created by Access2Research (a group of open access advocates, including SPARC’s Executive Director, Heather Joseph), requests that the US government make taxpayer-funded research freely available.
According to the petition site’s rules, any petition securing 25,000 signatures within 30 days will be sent to the White House Chief of Staff, and will receive an official response. The open access (OA) petition hit the 25,000 mark in half the allotted time.
The OA mandate builds on the National Institutes of Health’s policy, noting that that agency’s experience ‘proves that this can be done without disrupting the research process,’ urging the president ‘to act now to implement open access policies for all federal agencies that fund scientific research.’
John Wilbanks, Senior Fellow in entrepreneurship for the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and one of the creators of the petition, believes that the fast uptake by the public signals a new pace in the OA debate.
A number of key organisations outside the academic community reportedly endorsed the petition. The Wikimedia Foundation endorsed it and included a feature article on its Wikipedia’s English homepage. Patients advocacy groups from Patients Like Me to the Avon Foundation promoted the petition to their members, as did a variety of publishers, university libraries, commercial companies and advocacy organisations.
