Last week Congress passed the 2014 Omnibus Appropriations Bill, which, in addition to government spending and budget cuts, includes language that promotes public access to federally funded research. President Obama is expected to sign it into law.
The bill requires federal agencies under the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education portion of the Omnibus bill with research budgets of $100 million or more to provide the public with online access to articles reporting on federally funded research within 12 months of publication in a peer-reviewed journal.
Previously, the National Institutes of Health was the only government agency with a statutory public access mandate. Last year, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) made moves in this direction by requiring agencies with similar research budgets to formulate, and eventually implement, their own public access policies.
The additional agencies covered would ensure that more than $31 billion of the total $60 billion annual U.S. investment in taxpayer-funded research is now openly accessible.
Read about it in Science.