The US House of Representatives and the US Senate on January 16, 2014, approved the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2014, which will fund the federal government through FY 2014. President Obama signed the legislation, averting yet another government shut down. The Consolidated Appropriations Act restores some but not all of the budget lines cut in the sequester.
Importantly, the legislation includes language requiring public access to some federally funded research. Federal agencies included in the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education section of the legislation that have research budgets of $100 million or more are required to provide online access to peer-reviewed articles that report on federally funded research within 12 months of publication. Affected agencies include: the Department of Education, Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and the National Institutes of Health. There is also language in other sections of the legislation relating to public access to federally funded research.
For more details, see Andrea Peterson’s January 17 piece in the Washington Post’s technology policy blog, The Switch, “Half of Taxpayer Funded Research Will Soon Be Available to the Public.”
