OPEN ACCESS - KNOWLEDGE FOR ALL | HOME PAGE

The Bill is now being considered in the Congress and, if it passes, it will oblige federal research funding agencies with a budget more than 100 million dollars to develop Open Access policies that ensure public access to research performed by their employees or other researchers and institutions funded by them. The Bill primarily concerns the eleven US agencies responsible for the greatest part of research funding (e.g. National Science Foundation, Department of Energy). According to this law every researcher funded partially or entirely by any of these agencies will be obliged to deposit his/her research articles in an Open Access repository at the latest six months after its publication in a peer-reviewed journal.

The introduction of this bill follows the intense interest in Public Access policies by the White House Office for Science and Technology Policy. It also follows suit to the success of the first federal policy on this matter adopted in 2008 by the National Institutes of Health. Finally, it mirrors the storm of Open Access mandates and policies adopted by private and public US high education institutions in the last couple of years.

The Open Letter stresses, among other things, that: "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."

"FRPAA is good for education and good for research. It is good for the American public, and it promotes broad, democratic access to knowledge. While it challenges the academy and scholarly publishers to think and act creatively, it need not threaten nor undermine a successful balance of our interests."

The "Open Letter to the Higher Education Community" follows the letter sent to the Congress last November by 41 Nobel Prize winners in the natural and medical sciences in support of Open Access. 114 research foundations in the USA endorse the FRPAA up to date.

Links: Higher Ed Leaders Support Public Access, 2009-2010
Alliance of Taxpayer Access
Οffice of Science and Technology Policy of White House
An Open Letter to the Higher Education Community