OSTP public access plans

PDF

August 29, 2013

John Holdren, Director
White House Office of Science and Technology Policy
1650 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20504

Dear Dr. Holdren:

We are writing on behalf of an international alliance of academic and research libraries, advocacy organizations, students, and publishers dedicated to promoting the expanded sharing of research, to respectfully request a copy of each agency’s draft public access plan pursuant to the February 22, 2013 White House Memorandum from the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) on “Increasing Access to the Results of Federally Funded Scientific Research.”

As you may know, this Memorandum directed each federal agency, funding more than $100 million in research, to establish a policy to ensure that the results of taxpayer-funded scientific research are available for the public to freely access and fully use and to submit a draft plan of that policy to the OSTP by August 22, 2013.

We strongly support both the goals and objectives of the Memorandum, and just as importantly, the Memorandum’s express requirement that “in devising its final plan, each agency should use a transparent process for soliciting views from stakeholders.” In fact, we believe that transparency is a necessary component to meeting the objectives detailed in the Memorandum. To this end, we ask that you provide access to the draft plans as soon as possible to ensure all stakeholders have the opportunity to adequately evaluate the plans before they become final.

Thank you for your attention to this request. We look forward to working with you to develop a robust public access plan that ensures ready access to and full use of articles, as well as digital data, reporting on publicly funded research, in order to accelerate discovery, improve education, and fuel the translation of this research into innovative new products and services.

Sincerely,

Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries
www.aahsl.org
Contact: Gary Freiburger (521-626-6121)

Association of College and Research Libraries
www.acrl.org
Contact: Kara J. Malenfant (312-280-2510)

American Library Association
www.ala.org
Contact: Corey Williams (202-628-8410)

Association of Research Libraries
www.arl.org
Contact: Prudence Adler (202-296-2296)

Association of Southeastern Research Libraries
www.aserl.org
Contact: John Burger (919-681-2531)

Creative Commons
www.creativecommons.org
Contact: Tim Vollmer (650-294-4732)

Coalition of Open Access Policy Institutions
http://sparc.arl.org/COAPI
Contact: Andrew Wesolek (864-656-0137)

Electronic Frontier Foundation
www.eff.org
Contact: Adi Kamdar (415-436-9333)

Greater Western Library Alliance
www.gwla.org
Contact: Joni Blake (816-926-8765)

PeerJ
www.peerj.com
Contact: Peter Binfield (415-413-4956)

Public Knowledge
www.publicknowledge.org
Contact: Peter Suber (207-326-9482)

Public Library of Science
www.plos.org
Contact: Donna Okubo (415-624-1213)

SPARC (Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition)
www.arl.org/sparc
Contact: Heather Joseph (202-296-2296)