The Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA) currently sits in the House of Representatives, waiting to fundamentally change the way research is shared in our country. Stanford U. has recently announced its support of the act in an open letter urging other academic institutions to do the same. The FRPAA would mandate that all research efforts with budgets over $100 million publish their results online within six months of original publication. The minor costs of making research publicly available online by no means outweigh the priceless benefits of fostering a culture of shared knowledge within the American research community that has been long overdue.

Concerns for copyright are what currently restrict widespread access to research, and going digital would not eliminate all the problems in this area. But it remains the publishing industry that adamantly opposes such cooperation and openness. By no means would the act eliminate authorship or publishing rights. We must realize there is not a black market for research findings. More importantly, there is no market of ideas when doors are closed on academic research.

Sharing research must become a hallmark of American institutions and academia in the way that this act promotes. Publications that lie in a drawer, on a shelf or thousands of miles away do nothing to foster the growth of new ideas in the research community. Research is done for the benefit of society, but if that society is not allowed to learn from that research, it is merely text and data sets. When people are allowed to collaborate, add on to what others have created and expand an idea in a direction the original author never imagined, knowledge progresses much more rapidly than when individuals research and work in secret. FRPAA would create an online forum designed to facilitate peer-to-peer interaction, the sharing of ideas and collaboration. For the research community not to take advantage of the Internet in this way would only hinder our nation’s progress in the areas of research and development, areas where we are currently found lacking in a global comparison.

In a society where the power of the individual is celebrated and protected, FRPAA moves into a new age of progressive thinking. Protecting research must not come at the cost of preventing further research; copyright can be maintained while still permitting for the open exchange of ideas among academic institutions. The Editorial Board applauds Stanford for openly endorsing FRPAA and hopes that other universities and institutions will do the same.