Letter from 11 organizations opposing the FIRST Act
abernard102@gmail.com 2013-11-14
Summary:
Use the link to access the full text of the letter and the complete list of signatories. "On behalf of 11 national and regional library, publishing, and advocacy organizations, we are writing to express our strong opposition to the language contained in Title III, Section 302, of the proposed 'Frontiers in Innovation, Research, Science, and Technology Act of
2013' or the FIRST Act. This proposed language would severely undercut the ability of federal science agencies to implement meaningful policies to ensure that all members of the public receive timely, equitable, online access to articles and data reporting on the results of research that their tax dollars directly support. Our government funds research with the expectation that new ideas and discoveries from this research will accelerate scientific discovery and innovation, promote entrepreneurship, stimulate the economy, and improve the lives and welfare of all Americans. Around the world, there is widespread agreement that policies ensuring fast public access to, and full use of, articles reporting on the results of this research are critical to optimizing these outcomes. The language in Section 302 of the FIRST Act would turn back the clock on the substantial progress already made towards meaningful public access by the National Institutes of
Health (NIH), undermine the widely-supported White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Directive on Public Access to the Results of Federally Funded Research, and put the U.S. at a severe disadvantage with the rest of the world in terms of policies that promote innovation and competitiveness. The experience of NIH has shown that such an agency-branded repository can provide significant value to the public and to the federal government. PubMed Central, the NIH’s
publicly-accessible archive of its funded research articles, currently contains more than 2.8 million full text articles, and receives more than 1 million individual unique users each day, signaling the public’s strong support of such a solution. Such branding of agency repositories allows taxpayers to see the significant value of agency investments ..."