The Alliance for Taxpayer Access is a group of organizations that support open access to government sponsored research. The group has expressed a "Statement of Principles" explaining why they believe open access is important. They also list a number of international public access policies. This is no more so than in timely communication of essential information to effectively respond to health emergencies. While public domain archives have been embraced for depositing data, mainly post formal publication, they have failed to encourage rapid data sharing during health emergencies, among them the Ebola and Zika, outbreaks. More clearly defined principles are required to recognize the interests of those generating the data while permitting free, unencumbered access to and use of the data (pre-publication) for research and practical application, such as those adopted by the GISAID Initiative to counter emergent threats from influenza.