ALLIANCE FOR TAXPAYER ACCESS
www.taxpayeraccess.org
For immediate release
February 1, 2007
Contact(s):
Gavin Baker
Freeculture.org
grbaker@ufl.edu
(407) 929-5657
Jennifer McLennan
SPARC
jennifer@arl.org
(202) 296-2296 ext. 121
Students Rally for Access to Publicly Funded Research
Campuses declare “National Day of Action” in support of federal
legislation
WASHINGTON, DC - February 1, 2007 - Freeculture.org, the
international student movement for free culture, in collaboration
with the Alliance for Taxpayer Access (ATA), today announced that
February 15, 2007 will be a “National Day of Action” for students
that support open sharing of scientific and scholarly research
findings on the Internet. Events nationwide will highlight the
importance of taxpayer access to publicly funded research and rally
support for Congressional passage of the Federal Research Public
Access Act. The day also marks the fifth anniversary of the landmark
Budapest Open Access Initiative, when the worldwide open access
movement first took form, and will be supported by the launch of a
new Web resource and petition for public access, produced jointly by
freeculture.org and the ATA.
The Federal Research Public Access Act was introduced last year by
Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) and Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and is
awaiting reintroduction in the 110th Congress. The bill would require
federal agencies that fund over $100 million in annual external
research to make manuscripts of peer-reviewed journal articles
stemming from that research publicly available via the Internet. (For
further information about the legislation, see http://
www.taxpayeraccess.org/frpaa/). It is estimated that approximately
half of the research conducted at universities is government funded.
Freeculture.org and its 36 chapters nationwide joins 72 other members
of the ATA, 132 university and college presidents and provosts, and
thousands of taxpayers, patients, researchers, and librarians that
have voiced support for the legislation.
“Students are researchers, and were among the first groups to
recognize the vast benefits of open access,” said Gavin Baker,
director of freeculture.org’s Open Access project and author of a
University of Florida student senate resolution in support of the
Cornyn-Lieberman public access bill (http://www.sg.ufl.edu/MeetingPDF%
5C155.htm). “Since many of their professors, advisors, and colleagues
have conducted their work with the benefit of federal grants, it
makes sense that this work should be freely circulated and built
upon. Students have coordinated their efforts on a national level to
formalize their strong belief that public access to research is the
way to move forward.”
“Improving access to government-funded research results is critical
to advancing science,” said David Minh, a University of California
San Diego graduate student who serves on the coordinating committee
for Universities Allied for Essential Medicines. “Public access to
research will not only benefit students and researchers in the United
States, but will also empower scientists in the developing world -
who have far fewer resources available to them - to accelerate the
pace of biomedical research, particularly in neglected diseases.”
“Students adding their considerable energy and significant weight to
the momentum behind the issue is yet another sign of the strength and
breadth of support for public access to research results,” said
Heather Joseph, Executive Director of SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing
and Academic Resources Coalition, founder of the ATA). “We encourage
universities, libraries, researchers, scholarly societies, patient
organizations, and consumer groups to support student researchers in
making the National Day of Action a success.”
Campuses nationwide will be announcing individual events and support
for the National Day of Action in the coming weeks. For more
information, please visit the freeculture.org-Alliance for Taxpayer
Access student resource at http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/students/.
###
The Alliance for Taxpayer Access is a coalition of patient, academic,
research, and publishing entities that support free public access to
the results of federally funded research and advocate passage of the
Federal Research Public Access Act. The Alliance was formed in 2004
to urge that peer-reviewed articles stemming from taxpayer-funded
research become fully accessible and available online at no extra
cost to the American public. Details on the ATA may be found at
www.taxpayeraccess.org.
SPARC | 21 Dupont Circle NW, Ste. 800 | Washington, DC 20036 |
www.arl.org/sparc
(Via Heather Morrison on the CLA mailing list)
- JH