Help raise awareness of how the FIRST Act will delay public access

Oppose Section 302 of the proposed FIRST Act
A discussion draft of the Frontiers in Innovation, Research, Science and Technology Act of 2013 (FIRST) currently being circulated would impose significant barriers to the public’s ability to access to taxpayer funded research by restricting federal science agencies’ ability to provide timely, equitable, online access to articles and data reporting on the results of research that they support. The proposed FIRST Act is not in the best interests of the taxpayers who fund the research, the scientists who make use of it by accelerating scientific progress, the teachers and students who rely on its availability for a high-quality education, and the thousands of U.S. businesses, both small and large, which depend on public access to stay competitive in the global marketplace. One provision of the bill – Section 302 – would undercut federal agencies’ ability to effectively implement the widely-supported White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Directive on Public Access to the Results of Federally Funded Research, undermine the public access program pioneered by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and put the U.S. at a severe disadvantage among our global competitors.
SPARC.