Small Steps Matter: FASTR Passes Senate Committee Hurdle | SPARC

" ... With its action today, the Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC) advanced the cause of public access to publicly funded research articles another crucial step. In a unanimous voice vote, the Committee approved S. 779, the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research (FASTR) Act which now positions the legislation to be considered by the full Senate.  This marks the first time that a U.S. Senate Committee has acted on a government-wide policy ensuring public access to the results of publicly funded research and signals that there is deep support for the ideal that taxpayers have the right to access to the research that their tax dollars fund. This action continues the steady march towards enabling fast, barrier-free access to research articles that got its start with the establishment of a voluntary NIH policy in 2005, and slowly progressed with legislation shifting that policy to mandatory in 2008, again in 2010 with the America COMPETES Act and most recently with the 2013 White House OSTP Directive on public access.  Building on the framework from these past successful policies, the bipartisan-supported FASTR bill calls for federal agencies with extramural research budgets in excess of $100 million to establish consistent, permanent public access policies for articles reporting on their funded research. After weeks of discussion and debate, the bill was amended by HSGAC to ensure that those articles be made freely available to the public no later than 12 months after publication – and preferably sooner.  FASTR, like most proposed legislation, is far from perfect. Many would argue that a 12-month maximum embargo, or indeed, any embargo, is an unacceptable impediment and that these research articles should be made freely available without delay. They won’t get an argument from me; in fact, I completely agree. However, I have also seen firsthand that moving the needle on this issue from a system where publishers enjoyed unbounded, perpetual, exclusive, distribution privileges to one where articles are freely available on day one is simply not going to happen in one fell swoop ..."