On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 10:11 AM, phoebe ayers <phoebe.w...@gmail.com> wrote: > Possibly of interest to Wikimedians: the U.S. Office of Science and > Technology Policy is requesting public comment on making federally > funded scientific research open access. The deadline is Jan. 7. > > ----- Forwarded Message ----- > From: "Charles W. Bailey, Jr." <cwbai...@digital-scholarship.com> > To: st...@ala.org > Sent: Thursday, December 10, 2009 10:50:30 AM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific > Subject: [STS-L] OSTP Request for Comment on Open Access to Federally > Funded Research > > The Office of Science and Technology Policy is requesting > input regarding enhanced access to federally funded science > and technology research results, including the possibility > of open access to them. Comments can be e-mailed to > publicacc...@ostp.gov. The deadline for comments is January > 7, 2010. > > Here's an excerpt from the announcement > (http://bit.ly/5J1ZAp): > > Input is welcome on any aspect of expanding public access to > peer reviewed publications arising from federal research. > Questions that individuals may wish to address include, but > are not limited to, the following (please respond to > questions individually): > > 1. How do authors, primary and secondary publishers, > libraries, universities, and the federal government > contribute to the development and dissemination of peer > reviewed papers arising from federal funds now, and how > might this change under a public access policy? >....
Note: Comments on the OSTP open access policy close today -- the comment period was extended to January 21st. People in the US may wish to sneak in a last-minute comment today. Sorry for the late notice -- I meant to send a reminder sooner! Here's the text of the email I sent to OSTP. Thanks to Esther Hoorn of WM-NL & Melissa Hagemann of the advisory board for helping with ideas. ----- I support expanding open access policies for federally funded research across all funding agencies, following the NIH model. As an academic science and engineering librarian, I see first-hand the benefits of having broad access to current research for students and researchers alike. As a public university, our budget has been deeply impacted by the current recession, which means that our library has to reduce our purchases of expensive scientific journals. This unfortunately impacts student education -- students who are attending a university funded with public tax dollars, who need access to research that is also funded by public monies in order to stay up-to-date in their field, cannot get access to that same research because of the high prices charged by commercial scientific publishers. Open access means that more information would be available regardless of economic situation through the medium that people use the most to do research -- the Web. I am also a contributor to Wikipedia and other Wikimedia Foundation projects. Wikipedia is currently the fifth largest website and the largest single reference work in the world, accessed by millions of people every day to get information about all topics, including current scientific and technical issues. Wikipedia's mission is to provide technically accurate, up-to-date information that is well-referenced so all readers can also find out more about the topics they are interested in. However, many Wikipedia contributors and readers do not have access to the expensive and exclusive university libraries that are currently required to access most technical and scientific information. Instead, they rely on the resources currently available on the Web. Requiring that the results of federally funded research be made available online means that a vast world of up-to-date, reliable and important information would become available for use by Wikipedia and other projects that seek to make technical knowledge accessible to the public. As John Willinsky writes in the journal "First Monday" (itself open access), increasing the availability of open access research citations would increase the quality and educational value of Wikipedia (First Monday, v. 12(3), 5 March 2007). All federal open access policies should require the following to make them of most use to scientists, students, researchers and internet users: * Public access should be a requirement across all funding agencies, and agency policies should be coordinated to make them compatible with one another. * All articles that result from federal funding should be made freely accessible within no more than six months of publication (ideally less), and housed in widely publicized archives that ensure permanent public search and retrieval. These archives should be coordinated with currently available databases of federally-funded information as well, such as DOE's Information Bridge. * Articles should be posted in a standard, non-proprietary digital format, such as XML, in addition to pdf or other common formats; both pre- and post- prints should be allowed for deposit. Continued project funding should depend on compliance with these requirements. And all articles should allow full use rights, to make the work more accessible through a variety of innovative uses. Thank you for accepting comments on this very important issue, which impacts the lives of students, researchers, and librarians worldwide. Phoebe Ayers _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
