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 responsehttps://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/increasing-public-access-results-scientific-research 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.pdfto 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-f...
.
Dominic