When the US Office of Science and Technology policy issued a memorandum updating guidance on ensuring broad public access to publicly funded research outputs in August, it was immediately clear that the changes were designed to address far more than simply removing the embargo period for accessing articles. The memorandum highlights the U.S. government’s commitment to Open Science, placing it squarely among the Biden-Harris Administration’s top strategic priorities in science and technology.

The US invests over $80 billion in basic and applied scientific research annually, and the outputs of this research (including data and articles) are critical public assets. The new memorandum provides sweeping guidance designed to see that the benefits of these assets are maximized – by ensuring that that they are made available in a way that advances equity in both accessing and publishing research, accelerates the pace of discovery, improves research integrity, and increases the public’s trust in science. And the memorandum makes it clear that it is not enough for these assets simply to be available to read – they must be made available in formats that also unlock their full utility as well.

This provides an important incentive for the research community to critically examine the communication channels that currently dominate how research outputs are shared – through the lens of equity and inclusivity – and to move towards options that do not perpetuate exclusivity through financial, technical, or legal barriers. This makes it much harder to justify, for example, choosing to publish in a journal that charges Article Processing Charges, and makes options like Diamond OA, S2O, and depositing articles or article manuscripts into open repositories, much more attractive options.

Of course, what a policy calls for and how it is ultimately implemented are often two very different things. Industries that rely on profits from gatekeeping practices will surely exert pressure on federal agencies to adopt implementation strategies that favor the status quo. However, with the rapidly growing recognition of the benefits that more equitable paths to communicating research outputs presents, we should expect to see robust counterpressure from a broad set of participants in the research ecosystem.

Biography

Since her appointment as SPARC’s Executive Director in 2005, Heather has focused the organization’s efforts on supporting the open and equitable sharing of digital articles, data, and educational resources. Under her stewardship, SPARC has become widely recognized as the leading international force for effective open access policies and practices.

Prior to joining SPARC, Heather spent 15 years as a publishing executive in both commercial and not-for-profit organizations. She was the publisher at the Director of Publishing for the American Society for Cell Biology, where she managed the growth of Molecular Biology of the Cell, the first journal to commit its full content to the NIH’s pioneering open access repository, PubMed Central. 

Heather is also the founding President and COO of BioOne, a collaborative publishing organization designed to keep non-profit publishers operating independently. She is a frequent speaker and writer on issues relating to knowledge sharing, and on open access in particular.