[BOAI] SPARC Applauds White House for Landmark Directive Opening Up Access to Scientific Research

[Iryna Kuchma]

[Forwarded message from Stacie Lemick]


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                     Contact:          Ranit Schmelzer

February 22, 2013
202-538-1065


sparcmedia at arl.org ****

* *

*SPARC APPLAUDS WHITE HOUSE FOR LANDMARK DIRECTIVE*

*OPENING UP ACCESS TO SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH** *

*Ensures that Taxpayer-Funded Research Available to Public*

Washington, D.C. – The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources
Coalition (SPARC) today applauded President Obama for issuing a landmark
Directive to ensure that the results of taxpayer-funded research – both
articles and data – are made available to the general public to freely
access and fully use.

The action today comes about after a ten-year campaign by the “Open Access”
movement – scientists, universities, libraries, technology leaders, patient
advocates, entrepreneurs, students, and every-day Americans – aimed at
making taxpayer-funded scientific research freely accessible and fully
reusable in a digital environment.****

“This is a watershed moment.  The Administration’s action marks a major
step forward towards open access to scientific research,” said Heather
Joseph, Executive Director of SPARC, which works to broaden public access
to scholarly research.  “The Directive will accelerate scientific
discovery, improve education, and empower entrepreneurs to translate
research into commercial ventures and jobs.  It’s good for our nation, our
economy, and our future.”

“Knowledge is power.  It’s the power to innovate, to advance scientific
discovery, to promote economic growth, and to create jobs.  In 2013, we
should be taking full advantage of the digital environment to disseminate
the results of publicly funded research, not keep this knowledge locked
away.”

Every year, the federal government uses taxpayer dollars to fund tens of
billions of dollars of scientific research that results in thousands upon
thousands of articles published in scientific journals.  The government
funds this research with the understanding that it will advance science,
spur the economy, accelerate innovation, and improve the lives of our
citizens.  Yet most taxpayers – including academics, students, and patients
– are shut out of accessing and using the results of the research that
their tax dollars fund, because it is only available through expensive and
often hard-to-access scientific journals.

The potential economic benefits of opening up access to this research are
estimated to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars.  In instances where
this kind of open access has already been enabled, remarkable examples
demonstrate how powerful open access can be.  Placing the Human Genome
Project in the public domain, for example, enabled scientists everywhere to
access the data.  The $3.8 billion investment in the project has had an
estimated economic impact of almost $800 billion. ****

*Details of the White House Directive*

The White House
Directive<http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/02/22/expanding-public-access-results-federally-funded-research>affirms
the principle that the public has a right to access the results of
taxpayer-funded research and calls on all federal agencies with annual
research and development budgets of $100 million or more to provide free
and timely online access to the results of that research.  Articles
reporting on the results of publicly funded scientific research must be
made available after a 12 month embargo period.

The Directive builds on the progress made by the National Institutes of
Health (NIH), the first federal agency to require public access to
taxpayer-funded research.  Since its implementation, the NIH policy enabled
more than 90,000 new biomedical manuscripts to be made publicly available
each year, resulting in millions of Americans having access to vital health
care information.  Demand for this information is extremely high, with more
than 700,000 unique users accessing material from this repository each
weekday.

The Directive comes as the bipartisan Fair Access to Science and Technology
Research Act<http://www.arl.org/sparc/media/blog/with-introduction-of-fastr-congress-picks-up-the-p.shtml>(FASTR),
is making is way through the U.S. House of Representatives and
Senate.

“The Directive is a major achievement for both open access and open
government.  We should now take the next step and make open access the law
of the land.  We commend Senators Cornyn and Wyden and Representatives
Doyle, Lofgren, and Yoder for introducing FASTR and call on Congress to
pass it without delay,” said Joseph.

To follow the conversation on Twitter use the hashtags #openaccess or
#OA.  Media
questions can be directed to @SPARC_NA or sparcmedia at arl.org.

###

*About SPARC*

SPARC®, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, is an
international alliance of academic and research libraries working to
correct imbalances in the scholarly publishing system.  Developed by the
Association of Research Libraries, SPARC has become a catalyst for change.  Its
pragmatic focus is to stimulate the emergence of new scholarly
communication models that expand the dissemination of scholarly research
and reduce financial pressures on libraries.  More information can be found
at www.arl.org/sparc <http://www.arl.org/sparc/index.shtml>.

 ____________________________________
Stacie Lemick
Programs and Operations Associate
SPARC
(The Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition)
stacie at arl.org

 <http://groups.google.com/a/arl.org/group/sparc-oaforum>
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