Pit-Bulls vs. Petitions: A Historic Time for Open Access

Tempting as it is to keep chattering about pit-bulls and commercial venality we should perhaps refocus on something far, far more important and substantive that is going on at the moment. This is where today's real historic Open Access (OA) developments are transpiring:

The petition in support of the European Commission's Proposal to mandate OA self-archiving has already amassed 13,000 signatures in 13 days and is still growing. It is being signed not only by individual grassroots researchers but by universities, learned societies, scientific academies:

Rectors/principals of research organisations (51)
Heads of university/research institution departments or schools (44)
International societies or research-based organisations (38)
National societies or research-based organisations (35)
Research-based or research-centred charities/foundations (21)
National or international research funding bodies (8)
National academies (3)
Rectors' Conferences/University associations (2)
Government departments (2)

The petition is also being signed by institutional libraries, research organisations and publishers:

Institutional libraries (144)
R&D-based companies (66)
Publishers (30)
International or national library organisations (26)
National ICT organisations (11)
Museums (research-based) (2)

Please consult the petition's current updates as these figures are changing by the minute. (And if you or your organisation support the OA mandate proposals, please sign too.)

In addition to this petition in support of proposed mandates (of which the EC's is one, but of course the United States has a huge proposed mandate pending too: the FRPAA), the number of actually adopted mandates is growing steadily too (and will no doubt be accelerated by the growth of the EC petition):

ROARMAP now lists 58 registered OA policies, 27 mandates (21 adopted, 6 proposed)

11 institutional and departmental mandates:

AUSTRALIA inst-mandate Queensland U. Technol

AUSTRALIA inst-mandate U. Tasmania

EUROPE inst-mandate Eur Org Nuc Res (CERN)

INDIA inst-mandate Nat Inst Tech Rourkela

INDIA inst-mandate Bharathidasan U

PORTUGAL inst-mandate U. Minho

SWITZERLAND inst-mandate U. Zurich

AUSTRALIA dept-mandate U. Tasmania Sch Comp

FRANCE dept-mandate Lab Psych Neurosci Cog

UNITED KINGDOM dept-mandate U Southampton Dept ECS

UNITED KINGDOM dept-mandate Brunel U Sch Info Sys Comp Maths

10 funder mandates:

AUSTRALIA funder-mandate Australian Res Cncl (ARC)

AUSTRALIA funder-mandate National Health and Medical Res Cncl (NHMRC)

UNITED KINGDOM funder-mandate Arthritis Res Foundation

UNITED KINGDOM funder-mandate Biotech Bio Sci Res Cncl (BBSRC)

UNITED KINGDOM funder-mandate Chief Sci Off (Scottish Exec Health)

UNITED KINGDOM funder-mandate Economic and Social Res Cncl (ESRC)

UNITED KINGDOM funder-mandate Medical Res Cncl (MRC)

UNITED KINGDOM funder-mandate National Environmental Res Cncl (NERC)

UNITED KINGDOM funder-mandate Particle Phys & Astron Res Cncl (PPARC)

UNITED KINGDOM funder-mandate Wellcome Trust

6 funder mandate proposals:

CANADA proposed funder-mandate Can Insts Health Res (CIHR)

EUROPE proposed funder-mandate European Res Advisory Board (EURAB)

EUROPE proposed funder-mandate European Res Cncl (ERC)

EUROPE proposed funder-mandate European Commission

UNITED STATES proposed funder-mandate Fed Res Pub Access Act (FRPAA)

UNITED STATES proposed funder-mandate Nat Insts Health (NIH)

And the FRPAA proposal already has the support of many of the US universities' presidents and provosts

So let us accelerate OA's now-unstoppable progress toward the optimal and inevitable. The sterile debates of the past are behind us.

Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum