Obama petitioned on open access

“On May 25, the Wikimedia Foundation moved to endorse a petition to the White House calling for public access to journal articles resulting from research funded by US public sources. The campaign has already commanded close to 20,000 signatures.  The petition was initiated by the group Access2Research, whose members include the executive director of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), Heather Joseph, law professor Michael W. Carroll, and Dr John Wilbanks of the Consent to Research project, a major medical data-sharing endeavour. In backing the petition, the WMF has joined a wide range of educational and research institutions and communities, like the Association of Research Libraries, Creative Commons, Harvard's Open Access Project, and digital communities such as Academia.edu.  Kat Walsh is a prominent Wikimedian who has signed the petition. She is a co-author of the foundation’s endorsement announcement, along with senior research analyst Dario Taraborelli and general counsel Geoff Brigham. Kat told the Signpost that ‘we spend public money on research because it's important to everyone—why isn't it beyond question that the public should have access to it?" The WMF announcement points out that Wikipedia as well as the other projects hosted by the foundation are heavily dependent on verifiable, reliable sources, and that its volunteers should be "empowered to read it, report on it, and cite it.’  The key case study deployed by Access2Research in the petition is thePublic Access Policy of the US National Institutes of Health, one of the world’s major funding agencies. Heather Joseph told the Signpost that the current White House has had open access on its radar from its first month in office and has engaged with issues that research and open-access communities care about (see WMF response). She is confident that the administration will take action in response to a successful petition, either by means of executive action or by a positive response to legislative proposals by Congress.  Joseph pointed out that the petition shows not only major public support, which is likely to lead to improvements in open-access policy and, critically, will exert a positive influence on consideration of the proposed Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA), previously put to Congress in 2006, 2010, and again this year. The FRPAA would require that 11 US federal science agencies deposit articles on research they have funded into publicly accessible archives; the articles must be maintained and preserved by that agency or another repository that permits public access. Articles must be made available ‘’gratis’’ to users within six months. The legislation commands bipartisan support in both houses of Congress, and would complement executive actions with a legislative framework that could not be easily rolled back by a later administration... Heather pointed out that the foundation’s endorsement is important not just because the foundation is a major player, but because elected representatives remember the Wikipedia community’s action in response to the proposed SOPA (Signpost coverage) and the public attention carried by Jimmy’s status as public figure.To have an impact, the petition needs at least 25,000 signatures by June 19. Anyone who is at least 13 years old, US citizen or not, can sign it.”