Congress opens door to US open access

By John Morgan. A bill has been introduced into the United States Congress that would require most papers describing publicly-funded research to be made open access within six months of publication.
The Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act, introduced into both houses of Congress on Thursday, would halve the current 12-month maximum embargo required by the National Institutes of Health, and extend open access mandates to all funding agencies with annual budgets of more than $100 million. The move would also bring US embargo limits for repository-based “green” open access into line with those required for science papers in Research Councils UK’s new open access policy, due to come into force on 1 April. However, RCUK recently announced that it will tolerate embargoes of 12 months (and 24 months for non-science papers) during an initial five-year “transition period”. Read more...