A Letter to Congress on Public Access from the Higher Education Community | SPARC

Use the link to access the full text letter and list of signatories.  "The United States Congress is currently considering a new piece of legislation, the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act (FASTR). FASTR would require Federal agencies whose extramural research budgets exceed $100 million to develop policies ensuring open, public access to the research supported by their grants or conducted by their employees. This bill embodies core ideals shared by higher education, research institutions and their partners everywhere. The bill builds upon the success of the first U.S. policy for public access to publicly funded research – implemented in 2008 through the National Institutes of Health (NIH), along with the recently announced White House directive to expand NIH’s policy to all federal agencies. FASTR also mirrors the intent of campus-based policies for research access that are being adopted by a growing number of public and private institutions across the nation. We believe that this legislation represents a watershed and provides an opportunity for the entire U.S. higher education and research community to draw upon their traditional partnerships and collaboratively realize the unquestionably good intentions of the bill’s framers – broadening access to publicly funded research in order to accelerate the advancement of knowledge and maximize the related public good. By ensuring broad and diverse access to taxpayer-funded research the bill also supports the intuitive and democratic principle that, with reasonable exceptions for issues of national security, the public ought to have access to the results of activities it funds. The broad dissemination of the results of scholarly inquiry and discourse is essential for higher education to fulfill its long-standing commitment to the advancement and conveyance of knowledge. Indeed, it is mission critical. For the land-grant and publicly funded institutions among us, it addresses the complementary commitment to public service and public access that is included in our charters. In keeping with this mission, we agree with FASTR’s basic premise that enabling the broadest possible access to new ideas resulting from government-funded research promotes progress, economic growth, and public welfare. Furthermore, we know that, when combined with public policy such as FASTR proposes, the Internet and digital technology are powerful tools for removing access barriers and enabling new and creative uses of the results of research. To that end, FASTR improves on earlier versions of open access legislation by including provisions to ensure that articles are fully reusable to enable automated analysis by new technologies, unlocking cutting edge, multidisciplinary research and further empowering innovation.  Collectively, our universities engage in billions of dollars of funded research. On average, approximately 50% of our research funding originates with the federal government.  That public investment – estimated at over $60.5 billion for the research covered by FASTR – is complemented by our own institutional investments in research units, laboratories, libraries, and the faculty and staff whose expertise permeates them. FASTR has the potential to enable the maximum downstream use of those investments.  Many of us are already working on programs and policies to promote greater access to the wealth of research produced by our scholars; we are adopting policies for open access to the research outputs of our institutions; we are building open access digital repositories to collect research, developing advanced publishing channels, and working with our scholarly publishing partners to pursue the broadest possible distribution of scholarship at lowest possible costs. FASTR will complement these efforts and be a powerful tool in ensuring their success ..."