Open Access petition on 'We The People' web site

The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) has urged librarians and other interested parties to sign a petition calling for public access to all federally funded research, which was posted on the White House’s “We the People” website on May 21. If the petition gets 25,000 signatures within 30 days, it will be considered for action by the White House staff.

“The Obama Administration has been actively considering the issue of Public Access to the results of Federally Funded research for the past several years,” Kara Malenfant, ACRL scholarly communications and government relations specialist, wrote in an ACRL Insider post. “There is now a brief, critical window of opportunity for librarians, scholars, and taxpayers at large to demonstrate that we firmly believe open access to federally funded research should be a high priority for the Administration to act on right now.”