I wanted to share this news, since it does not seem to have come up yet. A
new White House memo, in response to an online petition, has created a
policy that will increase the amount of U.S. taxpayer-funded research which
must be made open access. It specifically refers to the NIH policy as a
model. Here is a quote from the petition
response<https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/increasing-public-acc…
authored
by John Holdren, Director of the White House Office of Science and
Technology Policy (i.e., the science czar):
Americans should have easy access to the results of research they help
support.
To that end, I have issued a memorandum today
(.pdf)<http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/ostp_public_access_memo_2013.pdf>to
Federal agencies that directs those with more than $100 million in
research and development expenditures to develop plans
to make the results
of federally-funded research publically available free of charge within 12
months after original publication. As you pointed out, the public access
policy adopted by the National Institutes of Health has been a great
success. And while this new policy call does not insist that every agency
copy the NIH approach exactly, it does ensure that similar policies will
appear across government.
The Huffington Post also covered the story here: <
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/25/aaron-swartz-white-house-taxpayer-…
.
Dominic