The White House promotes open access to research results

I received an e-mail from the White House yesterday. No, it wasn't Michelle Obama chatting about Pac-12 Men's Basketball (her brother coaches the Oregon State team). It was from John Holdren, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology and Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. I had signed a "We the People" petition advocating: "Require free access over the Internet to scientific journal articles arising from taxpayer-funded research." The petition and Holdren's reply are posted here.

Holdren has posted a memorandum requiring federal agencies that fund research (e.g., NSF, NEH, NIH) to come up with policies and procedures to make the results of that research publicly available without charge. The memorandum deals with access to journal articles as well as data archiving and the availability of basic data from federally-funded research.

This is a big step forward for open access, and I am encouraged at the twin foci of journal articles and data archiving. The Society for American Archaeology is doing various things to work toward open access for publications and data, including the upcoming launch of a new open access journal, Advances in Archaeological Practice, edited by Chris Dore.

Where are your data stored? If you died tomorrow, would your data be available to others? Are they in an online repository such as tDAR? If not, you should be working toward this goal; I am.