Hello world!

As public access policies go into effect across federal agencies in the United States, it’s worth some time to examine the history of public access policy in the country. It’s not a long history— the first such policy entered the Congressional record only in 2004— but it’s a complex history.

There are two particularly noteworthy elements to this history. First is the gradual expansion of public access policy. It started at the National Institutes of Health in 2004 as an opt-in recommendation, becoming a requirement in 2008. In 2013, public access became a requirement at a few federal agencies, operating at $100 million in research expenditures. And finally, it expanded to all federal agencies in 2022.

The second part is the location of these actions. The NIH mandate in 2008 came through Congress, though it had already been practiced in many areas of health science research. The other mandates came through the executive branch, specifically the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) under John Holdren in 2013 and Alondra Nelson in 2022. Importantly, all efforts to codify public access policy languished in committee.

On this site, there are many opportunities to further explore the history of public access policy in the United States, and there are resources to help researchers, librarians, and administrators understand how we got to this point and what’s required now. To this end, there are some important sub-pages:

1. Primary Resources contains a list of all proposed legislation for a national public access policy, along with executive memoranda through OSTP. It will be updated as additional proposals are introduced.
2. Resources is a place for researchers, librarians, and administrators to access helpful information in navigating the requirements of federal funding agencies. This, too, will be updated as new resources are developed.
3. Timeline of Public Access in the United States is exactly as the title says— a visual representation of public access history in the United States.

This project stemmed from research into the history of public access, in Science and Public Policy (Oxford University Press): “The Promise of Public Access: a recent history” DOI: 10.1093/scipol/scaf075