Omnibus Appropriations Bill Codifies White House Directive
Washington,
DC –....the FY 2014 Omnibus Appropriations Act....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 no later than 12 months after
publication in a peer-reviewed journal...
...Omnibus bill...affirms the
strong precedent set by the landmark NIH Public Access Policy, and more
recently by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) Directive on Public Access. At the same time, SPARC is pressing
for additional provisions to strengthen the language – many of which are
contained in the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research (FASTR)
Act – including requiring that articles are:
· Available no later than six months after publication;· Available through a central repository similar to the National Institutes for Health’s (NIH) highly successful PubMed Central, a2008 model that opened the gateway to the human genome project and more recently the brain mapping initiative. These landmark programs demonstrate quite clearly how opening up access to taxpayer funded research can accelerate the pace of scientific discovery, lead to both innovative new treatments and technologies, and generate new jobs in key sectors of the economy; and
· Provided in formats and under terms that ensure researchers have the ability to freely apply cutting-edge analysis tools and technologies to the full collection of digital articles resulting from public funding.
“SPARC is
working toward codifying the principles in FASTR and is working with the
Administration to use PubMed Central as the implementation model for
the President’s directive,” said Joseph. “Only with a central
repository and the ability to fully mine and reuse data will we have the
access we need to really spur innovation and job creation in broad
sections of the economy.”
Background
Every year, the
federal government uses taxpayer dollars to fund tens of billions of
dollars of scientific research that results in thousands upon thousands
of articles published in scientific journals. The government funds this
research with the understanding that it will advance science, spur the
economy, accelerate innovation, and improve the lives of our
citizens. Yet most taxpayers – including academics, students, and
patients – are shut out of accessing and using the results of the
research that their tax dollars fund, because it is only available
through expensive and often hard-to-access scientific journals.
By any measure, 2013 was a watershed year for the Open Access movement: in February, the White House issued the landmark Directive; a major bill, FASTR, was introduced in Congress; a growing number of higher education institutions – ranging from the University of California System,
Harvard University, MIT, the University of Kansas, and Oberlin College –
actively worked to maximize access to and sharing of research results;
and, for the first time, state legislatures around the nation have begun
debating open access policies supported by SPARC.
Details of the Omnibus Language
The Omnibus
language (H.R. 3547) codifies a section of the White House Directive
requirements into law for the Department of Labor, Health and
Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the Agency for
Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), and the Department of Education,
among other smaller agencies.
Additional
report language was included throughout the bill directing agencies and
OSTP to keep moving on the Directive policies, including the US
Department of Agriculture, Department of the Interior, Department of
Commerce, and the National Science Foundation.
President Obama is expected to sign the bill in the coming days.
