Free Online Publishing of Federally Funded Research Results

Source: "US seeks to make science free for all," Published online 7 April 2010 | Nature 464, 822-823 (2010) | doi:10.1038/464822a

My friend Julianne pointed out this article. As the title suggests, the U.S. Government is taking action to see that research it funds will be made freely available on the Internet when it is published in a peer-reviewed journal. "(T)wo parallel efforts from the US government could see almost all federally funded research made available in free, publicly accessible repositories:"

The Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA), a bill reintroduced in the Senate in June last year by Joseph Lieberman (Independent, Connecticut) and John Cornyn (Republican, Texas), would apply to all research funded by federal agencies with annual research budgets of more than $100 million, with a few exceptions such as classified research. The House could consider the bill within months.

Meanwhile, a six-week public consultation on whether and how public-access policies might be implemented ended on 21 January. Organized by the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), the consultation has sparked intense speculation that President Barack Obama might soon sign an executive order bringing a policy covering similar ground to the FRPAA into force. That order might also dispense with the $100-million budget cap, but, being an executive order, it would be more vulnerable than a federal law to being overturned by a future administration.

The article also notes:

Public access was boosted in late 2007, when the US Congress passed a bill making it compulsory for scientists funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to deposit their papers in the agency's PubMed Central archive within 12 months of publication.