Policy & Advocacy

Access to scholarly journals has lagged behind the wide reach of the Internet into U.S. homes and institutions. Subscription barriers limit U.S. taxpayer access to research that has been paid for with public funds.

Taxpayer access removes these barriers by making the peer-reviewed results of taxpayer-funded research available online, and for no extra charge to the American public.

Latest Policies

FASTR: The Fair Access to Science & Technology Research Act

H.R. 3427 / S. 1701, the bipartisan Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act (FASTR), will accelerate scientific discovery and fuel innovation by making articles reporting on publicly funded scientific research freely accessible online for anyone to read and build upon. FASTR was introduced in the US House of Representatives on July 26, 2017, co-sponsored by Representatives Kevin Yoder (R-KS-3), Mike Doyle (D-PA-14), and Zoe Lofgren, (D-CA-19), and in the Senate on August 2, 2017, by Senators John Cornyn (R-TX) and Ron Wyden (D-OR). The Senate version, S. 1701, incorporates changes made to the text before the bill  passed unanimously out of the Senate  Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in the 114th Congress. The primary difference is that the Senate bill extends the maximum allowable embargo period from six to twelve months. Background Every year, the federal government funds over sixty billion dollars in basic and applied research,...

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The OPEN Government Data Act

Reintroduced in both the House of Representatives and the Senate on March 29, 2017, the Open, Permanent, Electronic, and Necessary (OPEN) Government Data Act (S. 760 / H.R. 1770) is a bill to codify former President Obama’s Executive Order making “open and machine readable” the default for all government data. The sponsors of the legislation are Rep. Derek Kilmer (D-WA), Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-TX), Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI), and Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE). The bill would institutionalize the federal government’s commitment to Open Data, and codify a policy of  "open by default" for all government data. The bipartisan legislation would require federal agencies to publish government data in machine-readable and open formats and use open licenses. In addition, it would direct agencies to support innovative uses of government data, adopt consistent data practices across government, and develop best practices for Open Data. On December 5, 2016, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its...

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Enacted: 2013 Executive Directive on Public Access

On February 22, 2013, the White House issued an Executive Directive on Increasing Access to the Results of Federally Funded Scientific Research that requires U.S. Government agencies with annual extramural research and development expenditures over $100 million make the results of taxpayer-funded research—both articles and data—be made freely available to the general public with the goal of accelerating scientific discovery and fueling innovation. This directive means enhanced access to federally funded research articles as well as expanded utility of those articles. The availability of federally funded research in open online archives also will expand the worldwide visibility of research, increase the impact of our investment in research, and aid in examining related work at other institutions that compete for government grants and contracts. It will also enable researchers on your campus to begin to use these digital articles in new and innovative ways, including applying new computational analysis, text mining and...

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Enacted: AB 2192, California State Public Access Legislation

On September 7, 2018, California Governor Jerry Brown signed AB 2192 into law. This legislation amends the 'California Taxpayer Access to Publicly Funded Research Act', a bill that was chartered in 2014 and requires articles reporting on California state funded-research to be made publicly available. AB 2192 was originally filed by California State Assembly Member Mark Stone on March 16, 2018. This legislation builds on an earlier bill (AB 609), which provided public access to articles reporting on research funded by the California State Public Health Agency. AB 609 contained a sunset clause, and was set to expire in January 2020. To preempt this expiration, Assembly Member Stone filed AB 2192, which significantly expands and improves on AB 609 by: Requiring public access to articles reporting on research from all California state research agencies; and Provides explicit guidance on approved repositories for deposit of articles including the University of California’s...

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