Scientific Societies Approach a Moment of Truth
As pressure to publish research without paywalls grows, the nonprofits that publish a lot of it are wondering how they’ll pay the bills.
Let’s see the results.
Photographer: Tim Boyle/BloombergPresident Donald Trump’s administration is reportedly considering an executive order that would require all academic research financed by the U.S. government to be published without paywalls. This follows on legislation passed by Congress during previous presidencies that in 2008 required research papers funded by the National Institutes of Health to be made available to all no later than 12 months after publication and that in 2014 extended the policy to all federally funded research. It would also resemble the European Union’s Plan S, which is set to require all research funded by 19 European agencies to be published open access starting in 2021.
Open access to scientific research hasn’t exactly been a big theme at the president’s rallies, and it’s a bit of a surprise to see such a proposal coming from his less-than-science-friendly administration. When Robert Harington, associate executive director for publishing at the American Mathematical Society, broke the story last month in the Society for Scholarly Publishing’s group blog, the Scholarly Kitchen, he said it appeared to be an initiative of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, headed for the past year by research meteorologist Kelvin Droegemeier. A few days later, David Kramer of Physics Today confirmed with “an administration source” that something was in the works, but said it emanated from elsewhere in the White House.