Office of Science and Technology Policy Public Access Policy Forum
This Forum convened to consider the extent to which, and under what circumstances should, research articles funded by taxpayers but with value added by scholarly publishers be made freely available on the Internet.
The launch of the Public Access Forum, sponsored by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, took place in December 2009. The office sees one of their nation’s most important assets to be the trove of data produced by federally funded scientists and published in scholarly journals. The Forum focused sequentially on three broad themes: (a) Implementation, (b) Features and Technology, and (c) Management. In the first phase – Implementation – the public and various stakeholders were asked to consider who should enact public access policies, and how should a public access policy be designed in terms of timing, versions and the balance between mandatory and voluntary policies.
[There are files on their page that can be downloaded to reveal the many comments that were left by the community as a part of this consultation, though none are attached as they may or may not be of interest]
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Publication: US Government, Washington D.C., USA, 2009.