California weighs its own open access plan | Inside Higher Ed

"A bill in the California legislature would require state-funded research to be made public free of charge within a year of its publication. If it passes, the bill would create an open access policy for California's state-funded research similar to a policy announced earlier this year by the Obama administration. The federal policy, which is not yet finalized, would apply to most federally supported non-defense research. California is not the only state moving to make public the published research it helps to fund; Illinois is weighing a similar proposal. While it’s unclear how much research California currently pays for each year, it's likely nearly as much as or more than any other state. A 2008 study -- which looked at funding levels in the years before the recession and the state's budget crisis-- found California put roughly $350 million into state-funded research and development. The study by the California Council on Science and Technology found the state was funding research important to the state but not funded at sufficient levels by other sources, including energy research related to climate change. The state's Institute for Regenerative Medicine is also in the seventh year of a decade-long, $3 billion project to fund stem cell research. The bill’s chances are unclear. All of its sponsors in the Democratic-majority California Assembly are Republicans. A staffer for its lead sponsor, Assemblyman Brian Nestande, said the lawmaker is trying to find Democrats to help advance the bill. In debates on the topic in Washington, Democrats have been among the supporters of open access, and the opposition has largely come from some publishers. On Friday, the bill won formal support from the University of California system, which houses many of the state's top researchers ...  The bill is the idea of Annabelle Kleist, a science fellow in Nestande’s office who recently earned a Ph.D. in plant biology from the University of California at Davis. She became interested in the open access movement after she published her work on invasive species.  She began to get e-mail from people who were interested in the research and might be able to use her work but could not read it without ponying up for access to her journal article.  'Not being able to work together collaboratively because they couldn’t access the information was a problem as we’re trying to solve major problems in California,' Kleist said in a telephone interview.  She said the same is true of doctors and dentists who she said should have access to the latest information but would face the expense of subscribing to journals in order to get it, despite the fact their tax dollars may have helped fund the underlying research.

Kleist’s goals aligned with Republican Nestande’s push for transparency in the state, said Nestande’s legislative director Nanette Farag. So, he introduced the bill ..."