Nobel laureates support open-access policy to science

On Nov. 6, a group of Nobel Prize-winning scientists sent an open letter to the U.S. Congress in support of the Federal Research Public Access Act.

Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA) would require certain U.S. government research agencies to publish their scientific articles on the Internet and to make them available to the public without charge. According to the Nobel Prize winners:

For America to obtain an optimal return on our investment in science, publicly funded research must be shared as broadly as possible.

Among the groups to benefit most from open access to the research results are: scientists, physicians, health-care workers, libraries, students, researchers, academic institutions, companies, patients and consumers. In the letter, the laureates said that enabling access to the scientific information would make a real change in such the fields like biomedicine, climate change and energy research. It would stimulate the members of the public to take part in the research, and would lead to the activity called "citizen science." The laureates gave examples of government and educational institutions from all around the world that already allow public access to the research results. Among them are the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Research Councils in the United Kingdom, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Harvard, MIT, and the University of Kansas. The letter was signed by 41 Nobel Prize-winning scientists in medicine, physics, and chemistry.