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Increasing Public Access to the
Results of Scientific Research
By Dr. John Holdren,
Assistant to the President for
Science and Technology and
Director of the White House
Office of Science and
Technology Policy
Thank you for your
participation in the We
the People platform. The Obama
Administration agrees that
citizens deserve easy access to
the results of research their
tax dollars have paid for. As
you may know, the Office of
Science and Technology Policy
has been looking into this issue
for some time and has reached
out to the public on two
occasions for input on the
question of how best to achieve
this goal of democratizing the
results of federally-funded
research. Your petition has been
important to our discussions of
this issue.
The logic behind enhanced
public access is plain. We know
that scientific research
supported by the Federal
Government spurs scientific
breakthroughs and economic
advances when research results
are made available to
innovators. Policies that
mobilize these intellectual
assets for re-use through
broader access can accelerate
scientific breakthroughs,
increase innovation, and promote
economic growth. That’s why the
Obama Administration is
committed to ensuring that the
results of federally-funded
scientific research are made
available to and useful for the
public, industry, and the
scientific community.
Moreover, this research was
funded by taxpayer dollars.
Americans should have easy
access to the results of
research they help support.
To that end, I have issued a
memorandum today (.pdf) to
Federal agencies that directs
those with more than $100
million in research and
development expenditures to
develop plans to make the
results of federally-funded
research publically available
free of charge within 12 months
after original publication. As
you pointed out, the public
access policy adopted by the
National Institutes of Health
has been a great success. And
while this new policy call does
not insist that every agency
copy the NIH approach exactly,
it does ensure that similar
policies will appear across
government.
As I mentioned, these policies
were developed carefully through
extensive public consultation.
We wanted to strike the balance
between the extraordinary public
benefit of increasing public
access to the results of
federally-funded scientific
research and the need to ensure
that the valuable contributions
that the scientific publishing
industry provides are not lost.
This policy reflects that
balance, and it also provides
the flexibility to make changes
in the future based on
experience and evidence. For
example, agencies have been
asked to use a 12-month embargo
period as a guide for developing
their policies, but also to
provide a mechanism for
stakeholders to petition the
agency to change that period. As
agencies move forward with
developing and implementing
these polices, there will be
ample opportunity for further
public input to ensure they are
doing the best possible job of
reconciling all of the relevant
interests.
In addition to addressing the
issue of public access to
scientific publications, the
memorandum requires that
agencies start to address the
need to improve upon the
management and sharing of
scientific data produced with
Federal funding. Strengthening
these policies will promote
entrepreneurship and jobs growth
in addition to driving
scientific progress. Access to
pre-existing data sets can
accelerate growth by allowing
companies to focus resources and
efforts on understanding and
fully exploiting discoveries
instead of repeating basic,
pre-competitive work already
documented elsewhere. For
example, open weather data
underpins the forecasting
industry and provides great
public benefits, and making
human genome sequences
publically available has spawned
many biomedical innovations—not
to mention many companies
generating billions of dollars
in revenues and the jobs that go
with them. Going forward, wider
availability of scientific data
will create innovative economic
markets for services related to
data curation, preservation,
analysis, and visualization,
among others.
So thank you again for your
petition. I hope you will agree
that the Administration has done
its homework and responded
substantively to your request.
Tell us what
you think about this response
and We the People.
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