White House Pushes Journals to Drop Paywalls on Publicly Funded Research
Source: New York Times
White House Pushes Journals to Drop Paywalls on Publicly Funded Research
The policy, hailed by researchers as “transformational,” will be fully in place by 2026 and make publicly financed research available immediately at no cost.
By Vimal Patel
Aug. 25, 2022
Academic journals will have to provide immediate access to papers that are publicly funded, providing a big win for advocates of open research and ending a policy that had allowed publishers to keep publications behind a paywall for a year, according to a White House directive announced on Thursday.
In laying out the new policy, which is set to be fully in place by the start of 2026, the Office of Science and Technology Policy said that the guidance had the potential to save lives and benefit the public on several key priorities — from cancer breakthroughs to clean-energy technology.
“The American people fund tens of billions of dollars of cutting-edge research annually,” Dr. Alondra Nelson, the head of the office, said in a statement. “There should be no delay or barrier between the American public and the returns on their investments in research.”
Advocates for open-research access, like Greg Tananbaum, the director of the Open Research Funders Group, called the guidance “transformational” for researchers and the broader public alike. He said it built off a 2013 memorandum that was also important in expanding the public’s access to research but fell short in some areas.
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Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/25/us/white-house-federally-funded-research-access.html
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