Federal Research Public Access Act

The Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA), originally proposed by Senators John Cornyn and Joe Lieberman in 2006 and then again in 2010, is a proposal to require open public access to research funded by eleven U.S. Federal agencies.[1]

Contents

The Bill

The FRPAA would require that those eleven agencies, with research expenditures over $100 million, to create online manuscripts of journal articles of the research completed by that agency and make them publicly available. They must be maintained and preserved by the agency, or another repository that permits free and open access. It must be available to users without charge within six months after it has been published in a peer-reviewed journal.[2]

Agencies Included

The agencies included in this bill are[3]:

Supporters

In addition to Senator John Cornyn and Senator Joe Lieberman, Representative Michael Doyle, along with Frederick Boucher, Michael Capuano, Jerry Costello, Bill Foster, Barney Frank, Gregg Harper, Paul Hodes, Tim Holden, Dennis Kucinich, Rick Larsen, Zoe Lofgren, Stephen Lynch, Dana Rohrabacher, Fortney Stark, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and Henry Waxman have co-sponsored a similar bill in the House of Representatives (H.R. 5037[4]).

As of July 19, 2010, 120 Higher Education Leaders support this bill.[5]

References

Further reading