ACRL Urges Librarians to Sign Research Access Petition

“The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) has urged librarians and other interested parties to sign a petition calling for public access to all federally funded research, which was posted on the White House’s ‘We the People’ website on May 21. If the petition gets 25,000 signatures within 30 days, it will be considered for action by the White House staff.  ‘The Obama Administration has been actively considering the issue of Public Access to the results of Federally Funded research for the past several years,’ Kara Malenfant, ACRL scholarly communications and government relations specialist, wrote in an ACRL Insider post. ‘There is now a brief, critical window of opportunity for librarians, scholars, and taxpayers at large to demonstrate that we firmly believe open access to federally funded research should be a high priority for the Administration to act on right now.’  The open access movement has been gaining momentum in Washington in recent months. Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA) had co-sponsored theResearch Works Act (RWA), which would have prohibited federal agencies from adopting any policies that would authorize ‘network dissemination of any private-sector research work without the prior consent of the publisher,’ even if that research was financed by federal funds. But, they declined to take further action on the bill after Dutch publishing giant Elsevier, facing harsh criticism and a growing global boycott by scientists, dropped its support in February.  By contrast, the third iteration of the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA), introduced in February to the House by Reps. Mike Doyle (D-PA), Kevin Yoder (R-KS) and William Lacy Clay (D-MO) and in the Senate by Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX), Ron Wyden (D-OR), and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), would expand the existing Public Access Policy of the National Institutes of Health to 11 other federal agencies, requiring publishers to provide free online public access to all peer reviewed manuscripts and other works generated by federally funded research within six months of publication. In March, the bill gained 24 new co-sponsors in the House. ‘The highly successful Public Access Policy of the National Institutes of Health proves that this can be done without disrupting the research process, and we urge President Obama to act now to implement open access policies for all federal agencies that fund scientific research,’ the petition reads.”