Academic journals must provide immediate access to publicly funded articles, according to White House directive, a major win for open research advocates, allowing publishers to keep publications behind paywalls for a year end the policy that allowed them to hold on Thursday.
In formulating the new policy, which is expected to be fully implemented by early 2026, the Office of Science and Technology Policy said the guidance could save lives and benefit the public on several key priorities. – From cancer breakthroughs to clean energy technologies.
“The American public funds tens of billions of dollars in cutting-edge research each year,” said the office’s director, Dr. Alondra Nelson, in a statement. “There should be no delays or barriers between the American public and the return on their investment in research.”
Proponents of open research access, such as Greg Tananbaum, director of the Open Research Funders Group, called the guidance “transformative” for both researchers and the general public. He said it built on the 2013 memorandum of understanding, which was also important in expanding public access to research, but fell short in some areas.
The 2013 guidance applies to federal agencies with research and development spending of $100 million or more. This is about 20 largest institutions such as the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. The guidance released Thursday covers nearly all federal agencies, a major expansion that includes about 400-plus agencies, multiple experts said.
The Directive also requires publications to be made available in machine-readable form to ensure their use and reuse.
According to Tananbaum, the latest White House policy has made equity a fundamental principle governing access to research, giving universities with fewer resources the same access to critical research that wealthier institutions already enjoy. offers.
“If you belong to a large, R1, research-intensive institution, your academic library probably already pays subscription fees to many of these journals, so you can access them,” he said. Mentioned the most active universities. “But across America, not many people are actually affiliated with R1 institutions. It shows, and their taxes pay for it, too.”
The latest policy is to “broaden the circle of science. Broaden the conversation.”
Erin McKiernan, a professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, said articles behind paywalls can cost anywhere from $25 to $50, and papers that have to cite dozens or hundreds of publications. said that it could be added to Dr. McKiernan, who has spent the past decade conducting research in Mexico and Puerto Rico, said he has seen first-hand the impact of access restrictions on his students and colleagues.
She called the White House guidance “part of a larger global momentum towards research sharing.”
A spokeswoman for Springer Nature, one of the journal’s largest publishers, said in a statement that it was still reviewing the White House memo, but that its offering contained more than 580 complete We have open access journals, including 2,000 journals, including Nature. We are committed to the transformation to open access.
But the statement also contained initial signs of resistance to the White House directive. Funding agencies say they need more financial support for publications in exchange for research being made available to the public free of charge.
Elsevier, another leading publisher, said in a statement that it looks forward to “working with the research community and the OSTP to better understand its guidance.”
Michael Eisen, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and a longtime open access advocate, said the government directive established the principles. Eisen said previous attempts have been watered down by omissions, compromises, and arguments from the publishing lobby.
“For me, this was so transformative that the government finally took the hammer down and said, ‘Look, we’re not waiting any longer. We’ve been talking about this for 30 years.'”
In a statement, the White House said President Biden has been instrumental in making research accessible to the public for years. In a statement he made to the association, he noted that he could pay hundreds or thousands of dollars to subscribe to a single journal.
“Here’s the kicker: the journal owns the data for a year,” Biden said at the time. “Taxpayers fund $5 billion a year in cancer research each year, but once public, almost all taxpayer-funded research is put behind the wall. Please let me know how I can move the process faster.”