I urge you to support the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act
('FASTR', S. 1701, H.R. 3427).  This bill would require every federal agency
that spends more than $100 million on grants for research to adopt an
open-access policy that makes all research reports publicly accessible
after a fixed period of time.

Whilst the House bill sets that embargo period at six months, the Senate bill
sets it at a year. Please support a version of FASTR with an embargo period of
six months or less.

As a former Fulbright-Nehru Senior Research Fellow in India, I well know the
impact of open science not only in the developed world but even more crucially
in the developing world: global respect for states that lead in scientific
discovery depends in part on global access to those discoveries.  Open access
democratises the practice of science, not only domestically in less
well-resourced universities, colleges, and nonprofits, but also globally,
and heightens global respect for countries that make their science accessible.

The US National Institutes of Health, the UK Medical Research Council, and the
Wellcome Trust already have open-access policies with short embargo periods.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation requires research funded by its grants
to be open-access from the moment of publication - with no embargo period at
all - and publishers have accommodated this policy because they want not to
disqualify themselves from publishing top-notch research.

Government agencies invest millions of taxpayer monies in scientific research
every year - research that should be accessible and available to benefit the
public.  The Obama government acknowledged the importance of open access in
2013 with a memo ordering federal agencies and departments to make research
that they fund publicly accessible, but the priorities of future governments
are unknown.  Thus a mandate for open access should be codified in law, not
just promulgated in regulation.