In the “Increasing Access to the Results of Federally Funded Research” policy memorandum released in February 2013, the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) Director John Holdren directed Federal agencies with more than $100 million in research and development expenditures to develop plans to make the results of federally funded research freely available to the public within one year of publication. The memorandum also required researchers to better account for and manage the digital data resulting from federally funded scientific research.
The final policy reflects substantial inputs from scientists and scientific organizations, publishers, members of Congress, and other members of the public—over 65 thousand of whom recently signed a We the People petition asking for expanded public access to the results of taxpayer-funded research.
Click here to see the list of agencies that have made their implementation plans public.
The Scholarly Communication Program at Columbia University has also put together brief summaries of the agencies’ proposed solutions for providing public access to articles and digital data sets.