Re: [TYPES] Open Access petition to the ACM - please sign!

[ The Types Forum, http://lists.seas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/types-list ]

Dear Joathan,
     thanks for sharing this: it is an important step forward to make our voices heard, and I've been delighted to sign it!

We need to take quite a few steps, though, on the still long path to set up a sustainable infrastructure for the research publishing workflow that can last on the long term, and avoid the pitfalls we have often fall into when engaging in Open Source (see  https://www.fordfoundation.org/work/learning/research-reports/roads-and-bridges-the-unseen-labor-behind-our-digital-infrastructure/ for a "nice" museum of horrors :-))

I'll try to share some thoughts on this in the coming days

Cheers

--
Roberto

On Sun, Jan 05, 2020 at 05:06:05PM -0500, Jonathan Aldrich wrote:
> [ The Types Forum, http://lists.seas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/types-list ]
> 
> All,
> 
> Robert Rand, after conversations with a number of us in a Facebook group,
> has put together a petition to the ACM about open access.  It's clear that
> many people on Types are passionate about this...if you are an ACM member,
> I encourage you to join me in signing it!
> 
> https://www.change.org/p/association-for-computing-machinery-acm-support-open-access
> 
> 
> The petition asks ACM to remove its signature from the letter that opposed
> the proposed US open access policy, and asks for a vote of the membership
> on making the ACM digital library all open access, with any fees based on
> publication cost only.   If 1% of ACM members sign, then ACM's constitution
> (article 6) says that they must put the text in italics to a vote of the
> membership.
> 
> The full text of the petition is below.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Jonathan
> 
> 
> As members of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) we were
> disappointed to see the ACM sign onto a letter opposing a US government
> policy to require the free distribution of all federally funded research.
> As computer scientists, we are committed to the principles of Open Source,
> which promotes universal access to software, and Open Science, in which
> scientific research is both transparent and publicly accessible. When
> research funded by public agencies is signed away to private organizations
> and embargoed by them, it makes a mockery of these principles.
> 
> As such, we demand that the ACM immediately withdraw its signature from the
> letter to the US government. Moreover, we ask that the following proposal
> be put to a vote of the general ACM membership:
> 
> *The Association for Computing Machinery shall release all papers in the
> ACM digital library, past and future, under fully open access terms within
> five years. Moreover, it shall ensure that any charges for publication,
> whether to authors, conference attendees or institutions, should be no more
> than the cost of publishing the papers themselves.*
> 
> We further encourage the leadership of the ACM to take concrete steps
> towards Open Access immediately, in line with its stated purpose of
> fostering the open interchange of information.

-- 
Roberto Di Cosmo
 
------------------------------------------------------------------
Computer Science Professor
            (on leave at INRIA from IRIF/University Paris Diderot)

Director
Software Heritage                https://www.softwareheritage.org
INRIA			   
Bureau C328		     E-mail : [email protected]         
2, Rue Simone Iff          Web page : http://www.dicosmo.org      
CS 42112		    Twitter : http://twitter.com/rdicosmo 
75589 Paris Cedex 12	        Tel : +33 1 80 49 44 42           
------------------------------------------------------------------                                                 
GPG fingerprint 2931 20CE 3A5A 5390 98EC 8BFC FCCA C3BE 39CB 12D3