Fact of the Week: Federally Funded U.S. Research Will Now Be Publicly Available for Free

Source(s): White House Briefing Room, “OSTP Issues Guidance to Make Federally Funded Research Freely Available Without Delay,” news release, August 25, 2022.

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Gross Domestic Expenditure on R&D by Sector of Performance and Source of Funds (accessed August 26, 2022), https://stats.oecd.org/.

Commentary: Last week’s memorandum from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy announced that all federal agencies are to develop policies to make the results of federally funded research freely available by 2026. This includes research publications as well as their underlying data. It is hoped that increased availability of quality research will bolster the United States’ science and technology ecosystem. According to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the U.S. government spent $144.8 billion on research and development (R&D) in 2020. Less than half (approximately 45 percent) of U.S. government R&D expenditures go to projects performed by government agencies. The rest is distributed to businesses, universities, and private non-profits. The policy should therefore greatly increase the public’s access to research, though the actual policies agencies develop to achieve this are still forthcoming.