Gold on hold

摘要

AUS announcement on open access was eagerly awaited. But when it came last week, the new policy was a blow for anyone who wants fully paid-for, immediate access to the results of publicly funded research. The US Office of Science and Technology Policy has asked federal agencies to prepare plans to ensure that all articles and data produced from research that they fund are made publicly accessible within 12 months of publication (see page 414). That delayed-access approach would have looked progressive five years ago, when the US National Institutes of Health was first putting into practice its mandate that (at least) the authors' final versions of papers must be freely available within a maximum of a year of publishing-a' green' open-access approach, with which this publication has consistently complied. But in 2013, it looks as if a combination of financial constraints and a lack of firm resolve at the top of the US government is blocking movement towards the policy that ultimately benefits science the most: gold' open access, in which the published article is immediately freely available, paid for by a processing charge rather than by readers' subscriptions.