{"id":1348,"date":"2012-05-21T11:45:10","date_gmt":"2012-05-21T15:45:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/?p=1348"},"modified":"2013-12-17T13:02:47","modified_gmt":"2013-12-17T18:02:47","slug":"open-letter-on-the-access2research-white-house-petition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/2012\/05\/21\/open-letter-on-the-access2research-white-house-petition\/","title":{"rendered":"Open letter on the Access2Research White House petition"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I just sent the email below to my friends and family. Feel free to send a similar letter to yours.<\/p>\n

\n

You know me. I don’t send around chain letters, much less start them. So you know that if I’m sending you an email and asking you to tell your friends, it must be important.<\/p>\n

This is important.<\/p>\n

As taxpayers, we deserve access to the research that we fund. It’s in everyone’s interest: citizens, researchers, government, everyone. I’ve been working on this issue for years<\/a>. I recently testified before a House committee about it<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Now we have an opportunity to tell the White House that they need to take action. There is a petition at the White House petition site<\/a> calling for “President Obama to act now to implement open access policies for all federal agencies that fund scientific research.” If we get 25,000 signatures by June 19, 2012, the petition will be placed in the Executive Office of the President for a policy response.<\/p>\n

Please sign the petition<\/a>. I did. I was signatory number 442. Only 24,558 more to go.<\/p>\n

Signing the petition is easy. You register at the White House web site<\/a> verifying your email address, and then click a button. It’ll take five minutes tops. (If you’re already registered, you’re down to ten seconds.)<\/p>\n

Please sign the petition<\/a>, and then tell those of your friends and family who might be interested to do so as well. You can inform people by tweeting them this URL <http:\/\/bit.ly\/MAbTHG<\/a>> or posting on your Facebook page or sending them an email or forwarding them this one. If you want, you can point them to a copy of this email that I’ve put up on the web at <http:\/\/bit.ly\/J8EmyD<\/a>>.<\/p>\n

Since I’ve just requested that you send other people this email (and that they do so as well), I want to make sure that there’s a chain letter disclaimer here: Do not merely spam every email address you can find. Please forward only to those people who you know well enough that it will be appreciated. Do not forward this email after June 19, 2012. The petition drive will be over by then. By all means before forwarding the email check the White House web link<\/a>\u00a0showing the petition at whitehouse.gov to verify that this isn’t a hoax.\u00a0Feel free to modify this letter when you forward it, but please don’t drop the substance of this disclaimer paragraph.<\/em><\/p>\n

You can find out more about the petition from the wonderful people at\u00a0Access2Research<\/a>\u00a0who initiated it, and you can read more about my own views on open access to the scholarly literature at my blog, the Occasional Pamphlet<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Thank you for your help.<\/p>\n

Stuart M. Shieber
\n Welch Professor of Computer Science<\/a>
\nDirector, Office for Scholarly Communication<\/a>
\nHarvard University<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I just sent the email below to my friends and family. Feel free to send a similar letter to yours. You know me. I don’t send around chain letters, much less start them. So you know that if I’m sending you an email and asking you to tell your friends, it must be important. This […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2110,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[618,68],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-open-access","category-scholarly-communication"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5pLfN-lK","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":442,"url":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/2010\/04\/27\/presidents-and-provosts-present-an-open-letter-supporting-frpaa\/","url_meta":{"origin":1348,"position":0},"title":"Presidents and provosts present an open letter supporting FRPAA","author":"Stuart Shieber","date":"Tuesday, April 27, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Twenty-seven university presidents and provosts have posted an open letter in support of FRPAA. The list of institutions includes Harvard, Dartmouth, Princeton, Cornell, Duke, Stanford, Tulane, Rutgers, Indiana, two campuses of the University of Texas, and the University of California system and two of its individual campuses. The letter echoes\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "open access"","block_context":{"text":"open access","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/category\/scholarly-communication\/open-access\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1691,"url":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/2013\/02\/28\/open-letter-on-the-white-house-public-access-directive\/","url_meta":{"origin":1348,"position":1},"title":"Open letter on the White House public access directive","author":"Stuart Shieber","date":"Thursday, February 28, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"...White House... \"White House\" image by flickr user Trevor McGoldrick. As has been widely reported, this past Friday the White House directed essentially all federal funding agencies to develop open access policies over the next few months. I wrote the letter below to be forwarded to faculty at the Harvard\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "open access"","block_context":{"text":"open access","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/category\/scholarly-communication\/open-access\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":41,"url":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/2009\/05\/29\/what-percentage-of-open-access-journals-charge-publication-fees\/","url_meta":{"origin":1348,"position":2},"title":"What percentage of open-access journals charge publication fees?","author":"Stuart Shieber","date":"Friday, May 29, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"In the popular conception, open-access journals generate revenue by charging publication fees. The popular conception turns out to be false. Various studies have explored the extent to which OA journals charge publication fees. The results have been counterintuitive to many, indicating that far fewer OA journals charge publication fees than\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "open access"","block_context":{"text":"open access","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/category\/scholarly-communication\/open-access\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":797,"url":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/2011\/04\/13\/letters-in-recognition-of-the-nih-public-access-policy-anniversary\/","url_meta":{"origin":1348,"position":3},"title":"Letters in recognition of the NIH Public Access Policy anniversary","author":"Stuart Shieber","date":"Wednesday, April 13, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"In recognition of the third anniversary of the establishment of the NIH Public Access Policy on April 7, 2008, I've sent letters to John Holdren, Director of the\u00a0Office of Science and Technology Policy;\u00a0Francis Collins., Director of the National Institutes of Health; and Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "open access"","block_context":{"text":"open access","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/category\/scholarly-communication\/open-access\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":858,"url":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/2011\/06\/07\/the-nih-responds-to-my-letter\/","url_meta":{"origin":1348,"position":4},"title":"The NIH responds to my letter","author":"Stuart Shieber","date":"Tuesday, June 7, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Front steps of National Library of Medicine, 2008, photo courtesy of NIH Image Bank Imagine my surprise when I actually received a response to my letters in recognition of the NIH public access policy, a form letter undoubtedly, but nonetheless gratefully received. And as a side effect, it allows us\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "open access"","block_context":{"text":"open access","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/category\/scholarly-communication\/open-access\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Front steps of National Library of Medicine, 2008, photo courtesy of NIH Image Bank","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/files\/2011\/06\/nlm-203x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1561,"url":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/2012\/11\/06\/how-not-to-entice-an-author\/","url_meta":{"origin":1348,"position":5},"title":"How not to entice an author","author":"Stuart Shieber","date":"Tuesday, November 6, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"...There's a \"tree\" in it... \"Fall New England\" image by flickr user BrtinBoston. Used by permission. I received the attached email, inviting a contribution to a journal called\u00a0Advances in Forestry Letter. Yes, that's \"Letter\" in the singular, which is even still optimistic given the number of papers they've published so\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "open access"","block_context":{"text":"open access","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/category\/scholarly-communication\/open-access\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2110"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1348"}],"version-history":[{"count":28,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1348\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1903,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1348\/revisions\/1903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}