In a voice vote, the US Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs unanimously approved a bill that would require papers stemming from federally funded projects to be made publicly available, ScienceInsider reports.
In line with policy that's been in place at the National Institutes of Health for seven years and a two-year-old directive from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, this new bill, called the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act, would require agencies that spend $100 million a year or more on research to make the resulting peer-reviewed articles available to the public within a year of their publication in a journal.
The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition tells ScienceInsider that this move, though formalizing those previous policies, is important as it would ensure continuing public access to the research results when a new administration takes office.
ScienceInsider says the bill will now moved to the full Senate for a vote and notes that a version of it has been introduced in the House of Representatives.