Moving FASTR in the US Senate by Peter Suber.
From the post:
FASTR will go to markup tomorrow in the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC).
Here’s a recap of my recent call-to-action post on FASTR, with some new details and background.
https://plus.google.com/+PeterSuber/posts/G2uebVhVtBvFASTR is the strongest bill ever introduced in Congress requiring open access to federally-funded research.
We already have the 2008 NIH policy, but it only covers one agency. We already have the 2013 Obama directive requiring about two dozen federal agencies to adopt OA mandates, but the next President could rescind it.
FASTR would subsume and extend the NIH policy. FASTR would solidify the Obama directive by grounding these agency policies in legislation. Moreover, FASTR would strengthen the NIH policy and Obama directive by requiring reuse rights or open licensing. It has bipartisan support in both the House and the Senate.
FASTR has been introduced in two sessions of Congress (February 2013 and March 2015), and its predecessor, FRPAA (Federal Research Public Access Act), was introduced in three (May 2006, April 2010, February 2012). Neither FASTR nor FRPAA has gotten to the stage of markup and a committee vote. That’s why tomorrow’s markup is so big.
For the reasons why FASTR is stronger than the Obama directive, see my 2013 article comparing the two.
http://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/10528299.
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For steps you can take to support FASTR, see the action pages from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC).
https://action.eff.org/o/9042/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=9061
http://www.sparc.arl.org/advocacy/national/fastr
Even though I will be in a day long teleconference tomorrow, I will be contacting my Senators to support FASTR.
How about you?