USA: The Obama
administration issued a directive to expand open
access to federally funded research. The directive provides guidance to ensure wide
and timely accessibility of the digital data resulting from publicly funded
research (PFR). It calls on federal
agencies with annual research and development budgets of $100 million or above
to provide free online access to the results of research projects funded by the
federal government. And it specifically calls for PFR agency plans to make
their research manuscripts available to open access within 12 months of
publication in a scientific journal.
This
directive further signifies both the increasing momentum of Open Access
principles and legislative recognition of the major achievements made in recent
years in open-access publication.