Brazilian Petition Supporting Green OA Self-Archiving Law Proposal

From: Stevan Harnad <harnad_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Date: Sun, 3 Jun 2007 05:20:06 +0100

Hélio Kuramoto of IBICT has helped to formulate a Proposed Law (introduced
by Rodrigo Rollemberg, Member of Brazil's House of Representatives)
that would require all Brazil's public institutions of higher education
and research units to create OA institutional repositories and
self-archive all their technical-scientific output therein.

There is a petition in support of this Green OA Mandate. I urge all in favor
of OA in Brazil (and worldwide) to sign:

    http://www.petitiononline.com/PL1120/petition.html

Below is an English translation of the petition. Bravo to Helio and
Rodrigo for this timely and welcome step, setting an excellent
example for all.

Stevan Harnad

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    To: The Brazilian Scientific Community

    On May 23 of 2007, Rodrigo Rollemberg, Member of Brazil's House of
    Representatives, introduced Proposed Law nº 1120/2007 concerning
    the dissemination of Brazil's technical-scientific output.

    This is a pioneering initiative for this country and indeed for all
    of Latin America. Brazil can become the first Latin American country
    to establish a legal mandate for the deposit and distribution of
    Brazil's technical-scientific output. This Proposed Law represents
    a decisive and courageous step toward providing open access to
    Brazilian scientific research. If approved, the Law will contribute to
    eliminating access barriers to scientific information worldwide. In
    addition to being beneficial to the national economy, the Law will
    allow greater transparency in Brazil's investment in its scientific
    research, generating quantitative metrics to guide the planning and
    support of science and technology.

    The first article proposes that all Brazil's public institutions
    of higher education, as well as all research units, should be
    required to establish institutional repositories in which all the
    technical-scientific output of their academic and researcher staff
    must be deposited. The intention is to ensure that this content will
    be made openly accessible on the Web.

    The article proposes creating a High Level Committee co-ordinated
    by IBICT to design and direct whatever actions need to be taken
    to provide open access to scientific research. This Committee will
    have the mandate to discuss and formulate a National Policy of Open
    Access to Scientific Research Output.

    It is incumbent on all members of the scientific community to promote
    open access in Brazil by fighting for the approval of Law nº 1120/2007
    by the National Congress.

    We hereby request all those who support the Proposed Law to sign
    this petition.
Received on Sun Jun 03 2007 - 12:57:08 BST

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.0 : Fri Dec 10 2010 - 19:48:57 GMT