White House moves to increase public access to scientific research online - O'Reilly Radar

"Today, the White House responded to a We The People e-petition that asked for free online access to taxpayer-funded research. As part of the response, John Holdren, the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, released a memorandum today directing agencies with 'more than $100 million in research and development expenditures to develop plans to make the results of federally-funded research publically available free of charge within 12 months after original publication.' The Obama administration has been considering access to federally funded scientific research for years, including a report to Congress in March 2012. The relevant e-petition, which had gathered more than 65,000 signatures, had gone unanswered since May of last year. As Hayley Tsukayama notes in the Washington Post, the White House acknowledged the open access policies of the National Institutes of Health as a successful model for sharing research. 'This is a big win for researchers, taxpayers, and everyone who depends on research for new medicines, useful technologies, or effective public policies,' said Peter Suber, Director of the Public Knowledge Open Access Project, in a release. 'Assuring public access to non-classified publicly-funded research is a long-standing interest of Public Knowledge, and we thank the Obama Administration for taking this significant step.' Every federal agency covered by this memomorandum will eventually need to 'ensure that the public can read, download, and analyze in digital form final peer-reviewed manuscripts or final published documents within a timeframe that is appropriate for each type of research conducted or sponsored by the agency...'”