[Foundation-l] Access to academic journals (was Re: Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser)

[Melissa Hagemann]

On Wed, 9 Mar 2011, John Vandenberg <jayvdb at gmail.com> wrote:
 
> > And if there is interest in advocating on this issue, SPARC
developed
> > the Alliance for Taxpayer Access
> > (http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/action/index.shtml) which represents
> > universities, libraries, patient advocacy groups, and physicians
working
> > to promote OA.
> 
> I haven't heard of this before.
> 
> The website/campaign name begs a lot of questions.
> 
> "Why tax-payer access only?"

The message of public access to publicly funded research resonates with
policymakers. 

> "What copyright license allows for tax-payer only redistribution?"
 
Once it is available to the taxpayers who fund it, it is made freely
available online to everyone, in every country.

> If I understand correctly, they are promoting unrestricted access to
> tax-payer funded research.  Do they explicitly want govt-funded
> research to be public domain, like US federal works are, and therefore
> accessible to everyone, in every country?

Probably the biggest victory to date for the OA movement was a mandate
adopted by the U.S. NIH which stipulates that all the research funded by
the NIH (which amounts to approximately $29 billion annually) is now
made freely available through PubMed Central
(http://publicaccess.nih.gov/). Now the OA movement in the U.S. is
trying to extend this type of mandate to all federal research funding
agencies with budgets over $100 million. Likewise, there are projects
underway in other countries to advocate for similar policies, including
an open letter recently announced which targets UK funding councils
(http://tinyurl.com/64v9nvc). And finally, in addition to federal
research funding agencies, the OA movement also works with universities
to advocate for the adoption of institutional mandates which stipulate
that all  research produced by those affiliated with a university or
faculty be made freely available (see OA policies adopted by several of
Harvard's Faculties http://osc.hul.harvard.edu/). 

So some progress, but much more to do!

Melissa

> --
> John Vandenberg