FreeCulture joins the ATA

FreeCulture has joined the Alliance for Taxpayer Access and blogged its reasons why:

FreeCulture.org has joined the Alliance for Taxpayer Access, which supports open public access to taxpayer-funded research. We join other student groups such as Universities Allied for Essential Medicines and the American Medical Student Association as members, along with a long list of universities, libraries, patients, and public interest groups.

Our reasons for joining are two-fold:

1. As the leading group of student advocates for the public interest in intellectual property and information & communications technology, we recognize access to research as a defining issue for our generation. Public access will lead to faster cures and treatments for disease, improve scholarship and research, and promote development. Whether it's brilliant photos of space, GIS data, or scholarly journal articles, the people have a right to what they pay for. Access to publicly-funded research, and open access generally, is simply the right thing to do.
2. As students, we work with academic research all the time. After all, who isn't required to write a research paper at some time or another? Whether it's a term paper or a doctoral dissertation, scholarship always builds on the past. That requires access to the work of those who've come before us.

FreeCulture.org is proud to support the alliance's work on behalf of the Federal Research Public Access Act and other efforts. Here at the University of Florida, we worked with the Student Senate to pass a resolution supporting FRPAA and open access — and succeeded. We hope to work with ATA to provide more information and resources to engage students on the issue in the future.

PS:  Welcome to FreeCulture.  Students have a strong interest in OA, as scholars and as citizens, and their voices will help the worldwide campaign to bring it about.