U.S. Congressman Mike Doyle (Democrat) writes an open letter to U.S. government urging the White House to support open access to federally funded research. He names successful strategies outside the U.S. and relates to the petition “Require free access over the Internet to scientific journal articles arising from taxpayer-funded research”.

While we believe a continued commitment to research and development is an important component of investment in U.S. economic competitiveness, the added value of making research publicly available is that it can exponentially increase collaboration and intelligent knowledge sourcing among researchers.  Public access policies can help to boost the value of academic works by exposing them to larger audiences and increasing the potential for citations.