To make it easier to contact your Congressional delegation, the American Library Association has created an online action alert. Just enter your zip code, fill in your contact info, compose your message, and go. (Thanks, ALA.)
Unlike some other action alerts, unfortunately, this one does not supply a pre-written message. But the front page of the alert contains some bullet points in support of an OA mandate at the NIH. If you copy that text before advancing to the next stage, you can paste it into to the message field. You’ll have to reformat it before sending it, since the bullets will disappear in the plain-text message field. Or, you could use some of the language from the open letter to Congress from 26 US Nobel laureates in science.
If you don’t want to use the ALA web form, find your Representative and Senators and use their own preferred web forms, email addresses, or telephone and fax numbers. But please do it one way or another and do it soon. The House vote is on Tuesday, July 17, and time is running out.
Update. Charles Bailey has turned the ALA/SPARC bullet points into plain text ready to cut/paste into the ALA action-alert text box. This is a great convenience. Use the language as it is or paste it into the text box and modify it before sending it. (Thanks, Charles!)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 7/15/2007 10:56:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
