On 2/22/13, the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) released a memorandum with the subject: Increasing Access to the Results of Federally Funded Scientific Research. This memorandum from the executive branch directs federal agencies spending more than $100 million annually on research to require that:
- peer-reviewed articles based on that funding be freely and publicly available within 12 months of publication.
- digital data created by federal funding be made freely and publicly available.
The memo mentions more about preservation, storage, metadata, and other important considerations of digital texts and data. For example, data management plans are mentioned. JHU Data Management Services can help with both the plan and the actual storage of the data.
On 2/14/13, the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act (FASTR) was introduced in both legislative houses. It is similar to the OSTP’s memo. It calls for a shorter embargo period for journal articles: 6 months. FASTR also calls for those articles to give users the freedom to use computers and other technologies to perform research upon the articles. (Think text mining, pattern recognition, etc.)
The OSTP memo may make FASTR redundant. We’ll have to wait and see. According to the OSTP memo, federal agencies need to turn in a draft plan within 6 months. That’s much faster than Congress generally acts.
And don’t forget the JH Libraries Open Access Promotion Fund. We can reimburse your article processing charges when you publish in fully Open Access journals. Three more JHU researchers applied in February.