American scientific publishers panic over paywall policy rumours | News | Chemistry World

"Journal publishers and scientific organisations, including the American Chemical Society (ACS), are outraged about an executive order that is being circulated in the White House, which sources say may well be issued quietly the week of Christmas. The proposed policy apparently emanated from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and it completely upends things for scientific publishers.

The new policy would chuck the current regulation that former President Obama put in place in 2013, which mandated that proprietary journal articles based on federally-funded research be made available for free within 12 months of publication, and reduce that time to zero. Under the new scheme, journal articles would need to be made freely available upon publishing...."