White House Pushes Journals To Drop Paywalls on Publicly Funded Research

Academic journals will have to provide immediate access to papers that are publicly funded, providing a big win for advocates of open research and ending a policy that had allowed publishers to keep publications behind a paywall for a year, according to a White House directive. The New York Times: In laying out the new policy, which is set to be fully in place by the start of 2026, the Office of Science and Technology Policy said that the guidance had the potential to save lives and benefit the public on several key priorities -- from cancer breakthroughs to clean-energy technology. "The American people fund tens of billions of dollars of cutting-edge research annually," Dr. Alondra Nelson, the head of the office, said in a statement. "There should be no delay or barrier between the American public and the returns on their investments in research." Advocates for open-research access, like Greg Tananbaum, the director of the Open Research Funders Group, called the guidance "transformational" for researchers and the broader public alike. He said it built off a 2013 memorandum that was also important in expanding the public's access to research but fell short in some areas. The 2013 guidance applied to federal agencies with research and development expenditures of $100 million or more, about 20 of the largest agencies like the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. The guidance announced on Thursday covers nearly all federal bodies, a major expansion that includes about 400 or more entities, several experts said. The directive also requires that publications be made available in machine-readable formats to ensure use and reuse, a component that open-access advocates hailed as a game-changer for accessibility.

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