Jona Lendering of Livius.org draws my attention to a White House petition that should interest everyone:
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.
Other bloggers have endorsed the move. More power to their elbow, I say. There is no good reason why public money should be spent to create private monopolies.
I suggest that all US readers of this blog take the time and sign the petition.