Open Access Gains Momentum In Washington

White House takes action to increase access to the results of federally funded scientific research

When MIT faculty adopted an open access (OA) policy for their scholarly articles in March 2009, they expressed a strong philosophical commitment to disseminating "the fruits of their research and scholarship" as widely as possible. The MIT Libraries are paying close attention to recent events in Washington that have the potential to expand this commitment to include a significant percentage of all federally funded research in the United States.

On February 22, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) issued a directive asking each federal agency with over $100 million in annual research and development expenditures to develop a plan to support increased public access to the results of research they fund. Agencies have six months to come up with policies that would make both articles and data openly available to the public, consistent with a set of objectives set out in the memorandum. The OSTP has been evaluating the need for more open access to federally funded research for several years; in 2010 and 2012 it collected public comments, including those from MIT.