Friday, January 24, 2014

Half of federally-funded research to be made available to the public - UPI.com

Half of federally-funded research to be made available to the public - UPI.com
 Half of taxpayer funded research will soon be available to the public | The Switch

Jan. 21 (UPI) -- Last week's $1.1 billion omnibus spending bill contained a provision that now makes half of federally-funded research open to the public.

The provision makes it mandatory for the Education, Labor, and Health and Human Services agencies with research budgets over a $100 million to publish online research studies within 12 months of publication in a peer-reviewed journal.

According to the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), this means nearly $31 billion of research will now be openly accessible. This is similar to a program launched by the National Institutes of Health in 2008 and a WhiteHouse.gov petition that garnered enough signatures to earn an official administration response.

Executive Directive on Public Access | SPARC
On February 22nd, the White House issused an executive memorandum that included a directive requiring the results of taxpayer-funded research – both articles and data – to be made available to the general public to freely access and fully use, with the goals of accelerating scientific discovery and fueling innovation.

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