Extending mandatory open access beyond the NIH

Since late 2007, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has been man­dated to pro­vide to the pub­lic, free of charge, man­u­scripts devel­oped through NIH fund­ing within one year of pub­li­ca­tion else­where. The require­ment strikes a com­pro­mise posi­tion between sup­port­ing restric­tive pri­vate jour­nal pub­lish­ers and putting man­u­scripts in the pub­lic domain.

Now the Obama Administration (specif­i­cally, the Office of Science and Technology Policy, or OSTP) is con­sid­er­ing extend­ing the pol­icy to other fed­eral agen­cies that fund aca­d­e­mic research.

via Putting the “Public” In Publicly-​​Funded Research | Electronic Frontier Foundation.

I am a big sup­porter of open access to research. I think it pro­vides a large pub­lic ben­e­fit at a min­i­mal cost to any­one, even pri­vate pub­lish­ers (who, I think, can and do make most of their profit on rapid dis­sem­i­na­tion of new mate­ri­als to those who want them now, not six months or more later). Yes, pub­lish­ers add some value through edi­to­r­ial man­age­ment and pro­cess­ing, but most authors aren’t com­pen­sated, and many pub­lish­ers are mak­ing large prof­its with­out adding enough value to jus­tify the cost.