5/23/2012: From John Russell of the UO Libraries. The link to the petition to President Obama is at the bottom, you have to register to sign but it is quick.
Open access advocates have created a White House petition asking the President to consider expanding the Public Access Policy of the NIH (http://publicaccess.nih.gov/) to cover all journal articles generated from federally-funded research.
Why this petition? The deep pockets of publishers who wish to maintain their monopoly on the dissemination of scholarly information. For every discussion in Congress around providing public access to research supported by public funds, there are for-profit publishers who can spend our subscription dollars to ensure that Congress protects publisher interests. The White House’s petition platform stipulates that any petition receiving more than 25,000 signatures requires a response from the White House; the petition creators hope that an overwhelming response from the public will influence White House policy discussions about public access to research.
If you care at all about public access to federally-funded research, I encourage you to learn more about this issue and sign the petition:
Petition creator website: http://access2research.org/
Alliance for Taxpayer Access: Federal Research Public Access Act: http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/issues/frpaa/index.shtml
PolyMath’s Journal publishing reform page: http://michaelnielsen.org/polymath1/index.php?title=Journal_publishing_reform
UO Libraries’ Scholarly Communications page: http://libweb.uoregon.edu/scis/sc/
Link to petition: https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/!/petition/require-free-access-over-internet-scientific-journal-articles-arising-taxpayer-funded-research/wDX82FLQ
John Russell
UO Libraries
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