Have you ever failed to get hold of a scientific article you wanted to read? Had the failure something to do with a paywall surrounding the article and its siblings?
If your answer was confirmative on both accounts, chances are that you would like to have a closer look at a petition that aims to rarify such circumstances for research funded by U.S. taxpayers. Started last night, the target of the initiative is the White House, and anyone can sign the petition, not just U.S. citizens or residents. If 25,000 signatures are reached by June 19 (the current count is 3859), the White House will have to respond in an official manner to the proposal, which reads:
We petition the Obama administration to Require free access over the Internet to scientific journal articles arising from taxpayer-funded research. We believe in the power of the Internet to foster innovation, research, and education. Requiring the published results of taxpayer-funded research to be posted on the Internet in human and machine readable form would provide access to patients and caregivers, students and their teachers, researchers, entrepreneurs, and other taxpayers who paid for the research. Expanding access would speed the research process and increase the return on our investment in scientific research. The highly successful Public Access Policy of the National Institutes of Health proves that this can be done without disrupting the research process, and we urge President Obama to act now to implement open access policies for all federal agencies that fund scientific research.
If you replied “no” to either or both of the introductory questions, or if you disagree with the petition, I would be especially interested in your comments. I have signed the document (as #16), since one of the ways to satisfy such a “public access policy” is actual Open Access (in the sense of the Budapest Open Access Initiative), which is the first step towards a more open science communication culture. It it also provides a foundation on which free knowledge projects like those run by the Wikimedia Foundation or the Open Knowledge Foundation can develop.
The links between Wikimedia and Open Access have recently been the subject of a special report in the Signpost, and further details can be found in the Research Committee’s response to the White House Request for Information on Open Access. Both documents emphasize the importance of the reusability of Open Access materials.
As a token of illustration, I am pasting in below the list of files that have served as Open Access File of the Day on Wikimedia Commons so far. Click on an image to get to its metadata page. Together, these 174 files have been used to date on well over 10,000 pages within 176 Wikimedia projects.
2012
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May 21: A human brain as compared to that of a chimpanzee . Scale bar: 1 cm. -
May 20: The scorpion Mesobuthus longichelus . -
May 19: The freshwater snail Bulinus wrighti , an intermediate host of Schistosoma haematobium . -
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May 16: A male Enyalioides rubrigularis lizard. -
May 15: A Black howler monkey ( Alouatta caraya ). -
May 14: ECG of a patient with Fabry’s disease . -
April 13: Life restoration of a Hippodraco dinosaur. -
April 12: The agamid lizard Draco timorensis . -
April 11: A coral reef community. -
April 10: The sea slug Cyerce nigricans feeding on Chlorodesmis fastigiata . -
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April 7: The shell of the snail Opisthostoma goniostoma from Borneo . -
April 6: The shorebird Calidris canutus . -
April 5: The moth Catocala johnsoniana . -
April 4: Evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr . -
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May 2: The Mlabri people in Thailand are hunter-gatherers whose ancestors practiced agriculture. -
May 1: Capuchin monkeys sharing food. -
April 30: The bird-of-paradise Paradisaea raggiana . -
April 29: Reconstruction of Anatosuchus minor . -
April 28: The chameleon Bradypodion damaranum . -
April 27: CT scan of a craniopharyngioma . -
April 24: The shell Bulgarica denticulata . -
April 23: The remipede Speleonectes tanumekes . -
April 22: Melitaea cinxia . -
April 21: Flabellina affinis feeding on Eudendrium racemosum . -
April 20: The wasp Leptofoenus pittfieldae in Dominican amber . -
April 19: Mating in the sea slug Elysia timida . -
April 18: Computed tomography of a patient with Cherubism , showing bone malformation in both the mandible and the maxilla . -
April 17: Life restoration of Aegisuchus witmeri . -
April 16: The butterfly Coenonympha hero . -
April 15: Map of localities from which Paedophryne frogs have been reported. -
April 14: Congenital hereditary endothelial dystrophy . -
April 13: Gene expression in Drosophila melanogaster . Scale bar: 100 μm. -
April 12: Sociobiologist and entomologist Edward O. Wilson . -
April 11: Forest on the island of Nosy Hara in Northern Madagascar . -
April 10: Dilophosaurus wetherilli in a bird-like resting pose. -
April 9: HE staining of chicken optic tectum with the layered subventricular zone . Scale bar 200 μm. -
April 8: The frog Paedophryne dekot , one of the smallest species of vertebrates. -
April 7: Rhinophores in the slug Aplysia californica . -
April 6: A Cape sugarbird( Promerops cafer ). -
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April 4: Autoradiography of a saggital slice from an embryonal rat brain . Scale bar: 2mm. -
April 3: A male Enyalioides rubrigularis lizard. -
April 2: The diatom Phaeodactylum tricornutum . -
April 1: Paleogeography of North America during the Late Cretaceous . -
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March 30: Section through the olfactory bulb of a 16 days old rat brain. -
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March 28: Spodoptera exigua larva feeding on Nicotiana attenuata . -
March 27: The single-celled ciliate Tetrahymena thermophila , whose genome was published in 2006. -
March 26: The butterfly Boloria improba in its natural environment. -
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March 23: The pauropod Pauropus huxleyi. -
March 22: A T. rex trotting along beside a T. rex-sized chicken. Not just biomechanically impossible. -
March 21: The water flea Daphnia pulex . -
March 19: A clouded cornea in a patient with Fabry disease -
March 18: Range Expansion of Cro-Magnon into Europe from the Near East until about 32,500 years before present. -
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March 16: MRI scans of patients lacking a corpus callosum . -
March 14: A male Asian house gecko Hemidactylus platyurus from East Timor . -
March 13: A gorilla using a branch of a tree as a walking stick . -
March 12: Map of the periglacial region in Japan at the height of the Last Glacial Maximum about 20,000 years ago. -
March 11: A mouse fibroblast nucleus in which DNA is stained blue. The distinct chromosome territories of chromosome 2 (red) and chromosome 9 (green) are stained with fluorescent in situ hybridization . -
March 10: The Golden Brain: the headquarters of the Russian Academy of Sciences . -
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March 8: A group of Macaca arctoides monkeys. -
March 7: The viper Cerastes gasperettii with horns. -
March 6: Forest in the Western Ghat , a biodiversity hotspot . -
March 5: Albatrosses associating with a killer whale . Image taken by an albatros-borne camera. -
March 3: Yeast growing in chemostats . -
March 2: Amelogenesis imperfecta . -
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February 29: Adult male Hapalomys delacouri rat. -
Februrary 28: Fluorescence microscopy of wound healing in Drosophila . -
February 27: A female Brookesia desperata with two freshly laid eggs. -
February 26: Two-photon excitation microscopy of mouse intestine . -
February 25: The fundus of a patient with retinitis pigmentosa . -
February 24: The holotype adult skull of Pachycephalosaurus reinheimeri . -
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February 22: Coronal section of a human brain with cortical edema . -
February 21: A love dart of the snail Monachoides vicinus . -
February 20: A leaf-cutter ant . -
February 19: Nuclei in the worm C. elegans . -
February 18: The parasitic wasp Neoneurus vesculus ovipositing in workers of the ant Formica cunicularia . -
February 17: The geodesic architecture of viral capsids . -
February 16: Song-learning pathways in birds . -
February 15: A juvenile Brookesia micra standing on the head of a match . -
February 14: A deep-sea community living nearby a hydrothermal vent . Has annotations. -
February 12: Zebra finches -
February 11: A Golay cell -
February 10: Identical twins may look different -
February 9: Northwestern Yunnan, China -
February 8: Embryo and placenta -
February 7: The rove beetle Dalotia coriaria -
February 6: Pepper mild mottle virus in action -
February 5: The louse Fahrenholzia pinnata -
February 4: The small dinosaur Araripesuchus wegeneri -
February 3: Wolbachiainside a fruitfly cell -
February 1: The blood-feeding sandfly Lutzomyia longipalpis , transmitter of Leishmaniasis -
January 31: Francis Crick in his office -
January 30: The Eungella torrent frog Taudactylus eungellensis is critically endangered -
January 29: Gyps bengalensis, the oriental whitebacked vulture , is critically endangered -
January 25: Biomass as seen by children -
January 22: A tumor in the making -
January 21: How to measure odors? -
January 20: A sexually mature abalone Haliotis asinina -
January 19: Sari filtering in Matlab -
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January 17: Toxoplasma gondii -
January 15: A young male chimp -
January 14: Four different species of Volvocales algae . -
January 13: A neuron grown in silico . -
January 11: Field work at Mt. Ruapehu in New Zealand -
January 10: An optical illusion . Stare at the figure for 10s and then switch gaze to the (F). -
8 January: Koi pla – a traditional Thai dish -
6 January: An adult female fly, Apocephalus borealis. -
5 January: The sound of a black smoker -
2 January: A human liver fluke -
1 January: Afloat in kelp forests - the sea otter
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2011
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30 December: Anatomy of the human ear – editable version -
29 December: Bradypodion taeniabronchum on the watch -
28 December: A lissencephalic human brain -
27 December: Tyrannosaurus with skin infection -
26 December: Leaf mines by Phyllocnistis hyperpersea larvae -
23 December: A male Oligoxystre diamantinensis -
22 December: Mimicry in Heliconius butterflies -
21 December: A sow with suckling pigs -
20 December: The chromosomes of a women -
19 Dec 2011: Rice terraces in the Philippines -
18 December: Baltimartyria rasnitsyni -
17 December: Pomacea canaliculata eggs -
16 December: Bee waggle dance -
15 December: Shimmering bees drive hornet away -
14 December: Northwest Crown Fire Experiments in Canada -
13 December: HIV on macrophage -
12 December: The sea slug Pleurobranchaea meckelii -
11 December: A bat in flight -
10 December: Samples in a seedbank -
9 December: Chalcolithic leather shoe from the Areni-1 cave -
8 December: Soft tissue reconstruction of the Longdan tiger -
7 December: Qualia of sound -
4 December: Apertural view of the snail Rapana venosa -
3 December: Genome of Arthrobacter arilaitensis -
2 December: A Giant Haasts eagle attacking a New Zealand moa -
1 December: Actenoides concretus
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