Great news!
Today, the federal government released a policy requiring public access to federally sponsored research. The policy applies to all federal agencies with >$100 million in annual research expenditures. This is all the big ones (including the Department of Education) and many others, as well (
see this page). Under the new policy, final versions of all publications coming from federally funded research must be freely available to the public ~12 months after publication (
you can read the memo here).
For those of you who aren't aware of the magnitude of the restricted access problem, institutional journal subscriptions can cost as much $50,000 per year and commonly cost more than $10,000. Major universities can't even afford to subscribe to all the journals.
Personal subscriptions to the cheap journals like Nature and Science start around $150 annually. Journals that are specific to a field (e.g. American Journal of Human Genetics) can easily cost $1,000 or more per year. Individual articles are typically $35 each for non-subscribers.
And on top of all that, authors have to pay the journals $1500 or more to "cover the costs" of publishing their papers (
here's a table with examples --- the free journals charge LESS). And of course, reviewers don't get paid --- reviewing is "a service to the community that has reviewed for you." (I've included this information to counter arguments about the need for high prices to cover costs.)
Anyway, this new policy is HUGE and I am THRILLED.
