By Heather Joseph
Executive Director, SPARC
February 14, 2013
The Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act (FASTR), introduced today in both the House and the Senate, represents an important step forward in the legislative progression toward the goal of Open Access to publicly funded research. Based on the framework laid out by the highly successful NIH Public Access Policy, (as well as the previously-proposed Federal Research Public Access Act) the bill proposes terms and conditions that fully enable digital reuse of publicly funded research articles – as well as calling for their timely, barrier-free availability.
FASTR hones in on federal science agencies, applying to only those with annual extramural research expenditures of $100 million or more. The bill calls for manuscripts of journal articles resulting from publicly funded research to be made freely available online to the public through a digital archive maintained or designated by the agency that permits free public access to those manuscripts, enables their robust reuse, and ensures their interoperability and long-term preservation.
For more see: http://www.arl.org/sparc/media/blog/with-introduction-of-fastr-congress-picks-up-the-p.shtml
