---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Peter Suber <peters -- earlham.edu>
Date: Wed, Sep 17, 2008 at 10:47 AM
To: SPARC Open Access Forum <SPARC-OAForum_at_arl.org>
[Forwarding from SPARC. Also see the PDF edition,
<
http://www.arl.org/sparc/bm~doc/nobelistssupportpa-08sept.pdf>.
--Peter Suber.]
An Open Letter to the U.S. Congress
Signed by 33 Nobel Prize Winners
September 9th, 2008
Dear Members of Congress:
As scientists and Nobel Laureates we are writing today to support the
NIH Public Access Policy that was instituted earlier this year as a
Congressional mandate. This is one of the most important public
access initiatives ever undertaken. Finally, scientists, physicians,
health care workers, libraries, students, researchers and thousands
of academic institutions and companies will have access to the
published work of scientists who have been supported by NIH.
For scientists working at the cutting edge of knowledge, it is
essential that they have unhindered access to the world's scientific
literature. Increasingly, scientists and researchers at all but the
most well-financed universities are finding it difficult to pay the
escalating costs of subscriptions to the journals that provide their
life blood. A major result of the NIH public access initiative is
that increasing amounts of scientific knowledge are being made freely
available to those who need to use it and through the internet the
dissemination of that knowledge is now facile.
The clientele for this knowledge are not just an esoteric group of
university scientists and researchers who are pushing forward the
frontiers of knowledge. Increasingly, high school students preparing
for their science fairs need access to this material so that they too
can feel the thrill of research. Teachers preparing courses also need
access to the most up-to-date science to augment the inevitably
out-of-date textbooks. Most importantly, the lay public wants to know
about research findings that may be pertinent to their own health
diagnoses and treatment modalities.
The scientific literature is our communal heritage. It has been
assembled by the painstaking work of hundreds of thousands of
research scientists and the results are essential to the pursuit of
science. The research breakthroughs that can lead to new treatments
for disease, to better diagnostics or to innovative industrial
applications depend completely on access not just to specialized
literature, but rather to the complete published literature. A small
finding in one field combined with a second finding in some
completely unrelated field often triggers that "Eureka" moment that
leads to a groundbreaking scientific advance. Public access makes
this possible.
The current move by the publishers is wrong. The NIH came through
with an enlightened policy that serves the best interest of science,
the scientists who practice it, the students who read about it and
the taxpayers who pay for it. The legislators who mandated this
policy should be applauded and any attempts to weaken or reverse this
policy should be halted.
Name, Category of Nobel Prize Awarded, Year
David Baltimore, Physiology or Medicine, 1975
Paul Berg, Chemistry, 1980
Michael Bishop, Physiology or Medicine, 1989
Gunter Blobel, Physiology or Medicine, 1999
Paul Boyer, Chemistry, 1997
Sydney Brenner, Physiology or Medicine, 2002
Mario Cappechi, Physiology or Medicine, 2007
Thomas Cech, Chemistry, 1989
Stanley Cohen, Physiology or Medicine, 1986
Robert Curl, Chemistry, 1996
Johann Deisenhofer, Chemistry, 1988
John Fenn, Chemistry, 2002
Edmond Fischer, Physiology or Medicine, 1992
Paul Greengard, Physiology or Medicine, 2000
Roger Guillemin, Physiology or Medicine, 1977
Leland Hartwell, Physiology or Medicine, 2001
Dudley Herschbach, Chemistry, 1986
Roald Hoffman, Chemistry, 1981
H. Robert Horvitz, Physiology or Medicine, 2002
Roger Kornberg, Chemistry, 2006
Harold Kroto, Chemistry, 1996
Roderick MacKinnon, Chemistry, 2003
Craig Mello, Physiology or Medicine, 2006
Kary Mullis, Chemistry, 1993
Joseph Murray, Physiology or Medicine, 1990
Marshall Nirenberg, Physiology or Medicine, 1968
Paul Nurse, Physiology or Medicine, 2001
Stanley Prusiner, Physiology or Medicine, 1997
Richard Roberts, Physiology or Medicine, 1993
Susumu Tonegawa, Physiology or Medicine, 1987
Hamilton Smith, Physiology or Medicine, 1978
Harold Varmus, Physiology or Medicine, 1989
James Watson, Physiology or Medicine, 1962
Press Contact:
Sir Richard Roberts
(Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine,1993)
Tel: (978) 380-7405
Fax: (978) 380-7406
Email: roberts -- neb.com
Received on Wed Sep 17 2008 - 16:13:04 BST