Harvard response to the White House RFI on OA publications | Office for Scholarly Communication
Connotea Imports 2012-07-31
Summary:
"In summary, we strongly support White House action to require and enhance public access to government-funded research. We provide our general recommendations, as well as more detailed responses to the eight particular questions that were called out in the RFI below. However, we emphasize that decisions on many of the detailed issues under discussion here and in the other responses to the RFI are secondary to the general principle of requiring public access. We endorse the view that every federal agency funding non-classified research should require free online access to the full-text, peer-reviewed results of that research as soon as possible after its publication. There are three powerful reasons to take such a step. First, taxpayers deserve access to the results of taxpayer-funded research. It is their right. Second, public access maximizes the visibility and usefulness of this research, which in turn maximizes the return on the public’s enormous investment in that research. Third, public access accelerates research and all the benefits that depend on research, from public health to economic development, manufacturing, and jobs...."