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Sent Oct 30, 2009 -- Public Access to the scientific literature: A number of us (listed below) have been very supportive of open access initiatives and have been lobbying Congress and others. I have attached a list of fairly stalwart previous supporters from among the Chemistry and Medicine Laureates. We have been reasonably successful in getting some movement on this front, notably in persuading NIH to adopt their so-called Public Access policy for all published NIH research. That policy allows a one year delay between publication and deposit in PubMed Central. It is time for us to help the Public Access movement once again. There is a new bill (S.1373) sponsored by Senators Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and John Cornyn (R-TX), now making its way through Congress that would mandate the same sort of open access policy now adopted by NIH to all government agencies with budgets in excess of $100 million per year. The bill proposes to make publicly available -- after six months! -- the results of research funded by: Department of Agriculture, Department of Commerce, Department of Defense, Department of Education, Department of Energy, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Transportation, Environmental Protection Agency, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the National Science Foundation. At this time the Physics Laureates could also join the call as many receive support from NSF, DOE etc. I am proposing to send the attached letter as an open letter to Congress and I am hoping to attract a significant number of Science Nobel Laureates to sign on to this. I attach a summary of the bill, but a more complete account can be found at http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/frpaa Please email me if you would permit your signature to be included. With Best Wishes Rich Roberts Sir Richard Roberts Ph.D. F.R.S. 1993 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine Chief Scientific Officer New England Biolabs 240 County Road Ipswich, MA 01938-2723 USA Tel: (978) 380-7405 Fax: (978) 380-7406 email: roberts@neb.com Assistant: Erin Varney Tel: (978) 380-7206 Fax: (978) 380-7406 email: evarney@neb.com Current supporters: Peter Agre Sidney Altman Paul Berg Michael Bishop Baruch Blumberg Paul Boyer Sydney Brenner Gunter Blobel Johann Deisenhofer Edmond Fischer Paul Greengard Leland Hartwell Robert Horvitz Eric Kandel Roderick MacKinnon Kary Mullis Ferid Murad Joseph Murray Marshall Nirenberg Stanley Prusiner Richard Roberts Hamilton Smith Harold Varmus James Watson |