Cameron Neylon

[![The petition at 25,000
signatures](http://cameronneylon.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/25k.jpg "25k"){.wp-image-16677
.alignleft decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="600" height="460"
srcset="https://cameronneylon.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/25k.jpg 784w, https://cameronneylon.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/25k-300x230.jpg 300w"
sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px"}](http://cameronneylon.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/25k.jpg)

I'm afraid I went to bed. It was getting on for midnight and it looked
like another four hours or so before the [petition](http://wh.gov/6TH)
would reach the magic mark of 25,000 signatures. As it turns out a final
rush put us across the line at around 2am my time, but never mind, I
woke up wondering whether we had got there, headed for the computer and
had a pleasant surprise waiting for me.

What does this mean? What have [John
Wilbanks](http://creativecommons.org/about/people/#34 "John Wilbanks"){.zem_slink
rel="homepage" target="_blank"}, [Heather
Joseph](http://www.arl.org/sparc/about/staff/joseph.shtml), [Mike
Carroll](http://crailtap.com/ "Mike Carroll (skateboarder)"){.zem_slink
rel="homepage" target="_blank"}, and [Mike
Rossner](http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=18701899) achieved by
deciding to push through what was a real hard slog? And what about all
those people and groups involved in getting signatures in? I think there
are maybe three major points here.

**Access to Research is now firmly on the White House (and other
governments') agenda**

The petition started as a result of a meeting between the
[Access2Research](http://access2research.org) founders and [John
Holdren](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Holdren "John Holdren"){.zem_slink
rel="wikipedia" target="_blank"} from the White House. John Wilbanks
[has written about how the meeting
went](http://del-fi.org/post/23466490850/access2research) and what the
response was. The US administration has sympathy and understands many of
the issues. However it must be hard to make the case that this was
something worth the bandwidth it would take to drive a policy
initiative. Especially in an election year. The petition and the
mechanism of the "We the people" site has enabled us to show that it is
a policy item that generates public interest, but more importantly it
creates an opportunity for the White House to respond. It is worth
noting that this has been one of the more successful petitions. Reaching
the 25k mark in two weeks is a real achievement, and one that has got
the attention of key people.

And that attention spreads globally as well. [The Finch
Report](http://www.researchinfonet.org/publish/wg-expand-access/) on
mechanisms for improving access to UK research outputs will probably not
mention the petition, but you can bet that those within the UK
government involved in implementation will have taken note. Similarly as
the details of the
[Horizon2020](http://www.nature.com/news/europe-science-ministers-approve-2014-20-funding-framework-1.10774)
programme within the EU are hammered out, those deciding on the legal
instruments that will distribute around \$80B, will have noted that
there is public demand, and therefore political cover, to take action.

**The Open Access Movement has a strong voice, and a diverse network,
and can be an effective lobby**

It is easy, as we all work towards the shared goal of enabling wider
access and the full exploitation of web technologies, to get bogged down
in details and to focus on disagreements. What this effort showed was
that when we work together we can muster the connections and the network
to send a very strong message. And that message is stronger for coming
from diverse directions in a completely transparent manner. We have
learnt the lessons that could be taken from the fight against SOPA and
PIPA and refined them in the campaign to defeat, in fact to utterly
destroy, the Research Works Act. But this was not a reaction, and it was
not merely a negative campaign. This was a positive campaign,
originating within the movement, which together we have successfully
pulled off.Â There are lessons to be learnt. Things we could have done
better. But what we now know is that we have the capacity to take on
large scale public actions and pull them off.

**The wider community wants access and has a demonstrated capacity to
use it**

There has in the past been an argument that public access is not useful
because "they can't possibly undertand it", that "there is no demand for
public access". That argument has been comprehensively and permanently
destroyed. It was always an arrogant argument, and in my view a
dangerous one for those with a vested interest in ensuring continued
public funding of research. The fact that it had strong parallels with
the arguments deployed in the 18th and 19th centuries that colonists, or
those who did not own land, or women, could not possibly be competent to
vote should have been enough to warn people off using it. The petition
has shown demand, and the stories that have surfaced through this
campaign show not only that there are many people who are not
professional researchers who can use research, but that many of these
people also want, and are more than capable, to contribute back to the
professional research effort.

The campaign has put the ideas of Open Access in front of more people
than perhaps ever before. We have reached out to family, friends,
co-workers, patients, technologists,Â entrepreneurs, medical
practitioners, educators, and people just interested in the world around
them. Perhaps one in ten of them actually signed the petition, but many
of them will have talked to others, spreading the ideas. This is perhaps
one of the most important achievements of the petition. Getting the
message and the idea out in front of hundreds of thousands of people who
may not take action today, but will now be primed to see the problems
that arise from a lack of access, and the opportunities that could be
created through access.

**Where now?**

So what are our next steps? Continuing to gain signatures for the next
two weeks is still important. This may be one of the most rapidly
growing petitions but showing that continued growth is still valuable.
But more generally my sense is that we need to take stock and look
forward to the next phase. The really hard work of implementation is
coming. As a movement we still disagree strongly on elements of tactics
and strategy. The tactics I am less concerned about, we can take
multiple paths, applying pressure at multiple points and this will be to
our advantage. But I think we need a clearer goal on strategy. We need
to articulate what the endgame is. What is the vision? When will we know
that we have achieved what we set out to do?

[Peter
Murray-Rust](http://twitter.com/petermurrayrust "Peter Murray-Rust"){.zem_slink
rel="twitter" target="_blank"} has [already quoted
Churchill](http://blogs.ch.cam.ac.uk/pmr/2012/06/04/celebration-of-25000-signatures-for-open-access/)
but it does seem apposite. "...this is not the end. This is not even the
beginning of the end. But it is perhaps, the end of the beginning."

We now know how much we can achieve when we work together with a shared
goal. The challenge now is to harness that to a shared understanding of
the direction of travel, if perhaps not the precise route. But if we,
with all the diversity of needs and views that this movement contains,
we can find the core of goals that we all agree on, then what we now
know is that we have the capacity, the depth, and the strength to
achieve them.

 

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I’m afraid I went to bed. It was getting on for midnight and it looked like another four hours or so before the petition would reach the magic mark of 25,000 signatures. As it turns out a final rush put us across the line at around 2am my time, but never mind, I woke up wondering whether we had got there, headed for the computer and had a pleasant surprise waiting for me.  What does this mean?

Publicaciones de Rogue Scholar

25,000 signatures and still rolling: Implications of the White House petition