Friends: Here is an example of what is happening in the US on the open access front. Will all the science departments, universities and research laboratories adopt open access soon? What can we, the LIS professionals, do to see that kind of transformation? Arun From the Electronic frontier foundation MARCH 25, 2015 | BY PARKER HIGGINS https://www.eff.org/about/staff/parker-higgins Locking In Public Access to Scientific Knowledgeby Unlocking Scholarly Research Promising public access legislation FASTR (Fair Access to Science & Technology Research Act) has been re-introduced http://yoder.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/bipartisan-coalition-intr... by a bipartisan coalition in Congress. Lawmakers now have an important opportunity to strengthen and expand rules that allow taxpayers to freely read articles resulting from research their tax dollars support. EFF continues to encourage legislators to pass this bill as an important step forward—though there are still some measures to improve. https://act.eff.org/action/secure-open-access-to-taxpayer-funded-research*Take action to support FASTR* https://act.eff.org/action/secure-open-access-to-taxpayer-funded-research* right now.* Shortly after FASTR was initially introduced https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/02/new-bill-helps-expand-public-access-sc... in 2013, the White House released a directive requiring the results of research https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/02/white-house-open-access-memo-strong-co...funded by major federal government entities to be made freely available to the public. In the two years since, eight agencies and departments have begun complying with that directive by releasing plans for putting research online. Those steps have been successful and effective, and make a strong case for FASTR. The White House Directive is good, but codifying it through Congressional legislation would create a more stable rule, guaranteeing that the public's access is placed beyond the reach of any future presidential administration with different priorities. Further, FASTR would strengthen the public access provisions in the Directive by reducing the embargo period—the length of time after research is published before it must be made freely available to the public—from 12 months down to six. One major drawback of both the White House Directive and the FASTR legislation is the lack of an open licensing requirement. Public access is an important first step, but without open licensing, valuable secondary uses—like data mining, major cross-discipline analysis projects, and redistribution efforts—could be caught under a cloud of copyright uncertainty. In order to make the upgrade from “public access” to real “Open Access,” future rules should include a requirement for the products of research to be released under a free license, like the Creative Commons Attribution http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (CC BY) license EFF uses https://www.eff.org/copyright for its publications. *Tell your lawmakers to support FASTR* https://act.eff.org/action/secure-open-access-to-taxpayer-funded-research * today.* FASTR's reintroduction comes at an exciting time for the open access movement: the movement has now been building steam for over a decade, and has chalked up some major successes. Also last week, the Wikimedia Foundation released a thorough Open Access policy https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/03/18/wikimedia-open-access-policy/that sets a strong example for non-governmental organizations. Under that policy, the results of research that Wikimedia supports through grants or collaboration must be released under a free license. -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.