Open Access Mandate for Federally Funded Research
Open Access Mandate 2026 - Federally Funded Research
In August of 2022, President Biden announced that all federally funded research must immediately be made openly available to the public. This legislation takes effect in 2026. The National Institutes of Health (NIH), has already implemented a policy that makes NIH funded research available to the public. This does not necessarily mean that the published research is "Open-Access" by the definition of the term. There are many questions still revolving around the impact of this legislation:
- What will this mean for journal subscriptions and packages?
- How will open-access publishing and Article Processing Fees (APCs) be impacted?
- What license will I have to publish under?
We will continue to monitor the impact of this legislation and share news regarding the outcomes. In the meantime, the following is a list of readings that will shed some light on this legislation and the effects on scholarly output:
- Office of Science & Technology Policy (OSTP) Memorandum. (2022). Ensuring free, immediate, and equitable access to federally funded research
This memorandum provides policy guidance to federal agencies with research and development expenditures on updating their public access policies. In accordance with this memorandum, OSTP recommends that federal agencies, to the extent consistent with applicable law:
1. Update their public access policies as soon as possible, and no later than December 31st, 2025, to make publications and their supporting data resulting from federally funded research publicly accessible without an embargo on their free and public release;
2. Establish transparent procedures that ensure scientific and research integrity is maintained in public access policies; and,
3. Coordinate with OSTP to ensure equitable delivery of federally funded research results and data. - D'Agostino, S. (2022, September 11). Who’ll Pay for Public Access to Federally Funded Research? Inside Higher Ed.The White House painted an incomplete economic picture of its new policy for free, immediate access to research produced with federal grants. Will publishers adapt their business models to comply, or will scholars be on the hook?
- U.C Santa Barbara Library: What the White House Open Access Publishing Guidance Means for [...] ResearchersThe federal government is making significant moves to encourage open access to research. During the summer of 2022, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) made national headlines with its new guidance that, by 2026, research funded by all federal agencies should be made freely and immediately available to the public, with no embargo.
- Timmer, J. (2022, August 25). US government to make all research it funds open access on publication. ARS TechnicaMany federal policy changes are well known before they are announced. Hints in speeches, leaks, and early access to reporters at major publications all pave the way for the eventual confirmation.
- Kember, S., & Brand, A. (2023, Sugust 16). The corporate capture of open-access publishing: Done wrong, the movement will just reproduce the old monopolies. The Chronicle of Higher Education.The open-access policies now being adopted by governments around the world, most notably in the United States, Britain, and the European Union, are designed to remove paywalls from the publication of publicly funded research. In the United States, guidelines issued last year by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy require all federal funding agencies to devise and roll out plans for open publications and research data, as a condition of funding, by the start of 2026.
Google Scholar Funding Agencies Help Page
Many research funding agencies promote broad access to funded research by mandating that articles describing the research should be publicly available. The Public Access section of a Google Scholar profile contains the articles that are expected to be publicly available based on funding agency mandates. For each article, you can view the applicable mandates and see if it is publicly available. If the article has a publicly available version, a link marked [PDF] or [HTML] appears on the right hand side.
Please See the Link to the page below:
- Google Scholar Funding ProfilesGoogle Scholar's information page on funding agencies and open access mandates
