The Alliance for Taxpayer Access is committed to the following four general principles:

TAXPAYER RIGHTS

American taxpayers are entitled to open access on the Internet to the peer-reviewed research articles and underlying research data funded by the U.S. Government.

OPEN ACCESS

Widespread access to these articles and data is an essential, inseparable component of our nation's investment in research and education.

INCREASE ROI

Research articles and data should be shared in cost-effective ways that take advantage of the Internet, stimulate further discovery and innovation, and advance the translation of this knowledge into economic benefits.

ACCELERATE DISCOVERY

Enhanced access to and expanded sharing of information will lead to usage by millions of scientists, professionals, and individuals, and will deliver an accelerated return on the taxpayers' investment.

Policies

The Alliance for Taxpayer Access works to maximize the return on America's investment in taxpayer funded research by making it accessible to the businesses, healthcare professionals, and any member of the general public who can put it to use.

Impact Stories

Photo by Duke University

From Student to Patient to Leader in Finding the Cure

Josh Sommer suffered from severe headaches during his freshman year at Duke University where he was studying civil and environmental engineering. At 18, he learned a tumor was pressing against his brainstem and wrapped around several major arteries. “I woke...

Photo by GoldLab Foundation

Access to Information Can Mean The Difference Between Life and Death

Access to information can mean the difference between life and death. This is especially true for families advocating for their loved ones with serious medical conditions. When a doctor isn’t well versed in a certain disease and there is a...

Photo by US Government

Share Your Story

How have difficulties in accessing research affected you? Why do you believe research should be available to those who funded it? Share your story and help us catalog all the reasons access to research should be a taxpayer right.

Latest News

Ministers’ call for free open science publishing backed

Publicly funded research outputs should be immediately and openly available to all without barriers such as subscription fees or paywalls, say European scientific community leaders who welcomed a recent 20-point plan agreed by the Council of the European Union to encourage open science.

‘Too greedy’: mass walkout at global science journal over ‘unethical’ fees

Entire board resigns over actions of academic publisher whose profit margins outstrip even Google and Amazon.

Time to Reform Academic Publishing

Our everyday work—from designing and running experiments to diagnosing and treating patients—relies on the results of taxpayer-funded research. Having these resources freely available will help to accelerate innovation and level the playing field for smaller and less well-funded research groups and institutions.

Why NASA and federal agencies are declaring this the Year of Open Science

During the Year of Open Science, NASA is hosting free in-person and virtual workshops to teach basic open-science skills: how to participate, how to write a data-management or software-management plan, and how to share data, software and results.

Students, faculty support decision to remove paywalls from publicly funded research

Publicly funded research should be rid of paywalls by 2026, according to an Aug. 25 memorandum from the White House, which requires federal agencies to make all public research accessible.

US orders publicly funded research be made free to access immediately

A Biden administration order that published results of federally funded research should be made immediately and freely available to readers worldwide has been hailed as a crowning victory for advocates of open science.

‘A Historic Moment’: New Guidance Requires Federally Funded Research to Be Open Access

In a move hailed by open-access advocates, the White House on Thursday released guidance dictating that federally funded research be made freely and immediately available to the public.

No More Paywalls on Federally Funded Research: White House

The Biden administration will by 2026 require that all publicly funded work be deposited in designated repositories immediately on publication.

Biden Administration Announces Historic Open Access Policy for Taxpayer-Funded Research

The culmination of a 20-year advocacy effort, the new policy will finally make taxpayer-funded research available to the public without cost or delay.

White House Pushes Journals to Drop Paywalls on Publicly Funded Research

The policy, hailed by researchers as “transformational,” will be fully in place by 2026 and make publicly financed research available immediately at no cost.

White House requires immediate access to all U.S.-funded research papers by 2025

President Joe Biden’s administration announced yesterday that, by the end of 2025, federal agencies must make papers that describe taxpayer-funded work freely available to the public as soon as the final peer-reviewed manuscript is published.

Open science, publishing, and public research support: Could Trump have it right?

In December, E&E News reported that the president was considering an executive action requiring that all federally funded research become available to the public immediately upon publication.

Trump might help free science that’s locked behind paywalls

The Trump administration is reportedly considering issuing an executive order that would make it easier for everyone to access publicly funded research.

Time to break academic publishing’s stranglehold on research

Science journals are laughing all the way to the bank, locking the results of publicly funded research behind exorbitant paywalls. A campaign to make content free must succeed.

European countries demand that publicly funded research be free

Most researchers’ work remains fenced off by an online paywall. That may change with a radical European initiative unveiled earlier this month.

Scientific publishing is a rip-off. We fund the research – it should be free

Academic publishing might sound like an obscure and fusty affair, but it uses one of the most ruthless and profitable business models of any industry.

An explosion of openness is about to hit scientific publishing

Major European countries are mandating that publicly-funded research should appear only in open-access journals.

Coalition of European Funders Announces “Plan S” to Require Full OA, Cap APCs, & Disallow Publication in Hybrid Journals

A group of 10 European research funders, supported by the European Commission and the European Research Council released plans to mandate a move to full, immediate Open Access for all of their funded research articles by January 1, 2020.

California Bill Is a Win for Access to Scientific Research

The California legislature just scored a huge win in the fight for open access to scientific research.

Who Gets to Read the Research We Pay For?

Scientific journals’ lock on new studies has ignited tension for years. When it comes to access for people with rare diseases, it becomes an ethical issue too.

OPEN Government Data Act sees a clear path through Congress as part of NDAA

The bill, which sets the “presumption” that government data should be presented as open and machine-readable data, passed the Senate in December 2016 but didn’t quite make it into law. Now, a tweaked version has been added as an amendment to NDAA, a tactic sponsors anticipate will yield success.

FASTR Legislation Would Ensure Permanency of Public Access to Scientific Research

SPARC today applauded the introduction of the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research (FASTR) Act, which would ensure that public access to research articles becomes the law of the land.

OPEN Government Data Act moves to Senate floor after markup

Legislation requiring federal agencies to publish their data online in a searchable, nonproprietary, machine-readable format has been cleared for the Senate following a May 17 markup by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Why IBM, AWS, others care about open government data

More than 80 organizations, including big tech companies such as Yelp, want the government to act quickly on the OPEN Government Data Act. The bill, reintroduced recently by a bipartisan, bicameral group of lawmakers, would set a presumption that all government data be published in open, machine-readable formats.

Open Science Prize Demonstrates Power of Open Research

Open Science has long held the promise of changing the world. Now, concrete examples are emerging that illustrate how open collaboration among researchers is doing just that. The first-ever Open Science Prize, sponsored by a collaboration among the U.K.-based Wellcome Trust, the U.S. National Institutes of Health, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, encouraged researchers who used open as an enabling strategy to develop innovative tools and services that could unleash the power of data to advance discovery and improve health around the world.

Prominent Funding Organizations Team Up to Launch Open Research Funders Group

Eight highly-visible organizations today announced the launch of the Open Research Funders Group, a partnership designed to increase access to research outputs. With nearly $5 billion in combined annual grants conferred, these organizations are committed to using their positions to foster more open sharing of research articles and data. This openness, the members believe, will accelerate the pace of discovery, reduce information-sharing gaps, encourage innovation, and promote reproducibility.

Vice President’s Cancer Moonshot Report Takes Additional Steps Towards Open Data, Nods at Open Access to Publications

This afternoon, Vice President Biden presented a comprehensive report on his Cancer Moonshot Initiative during an event at the White House. He noted that while the Moonshot has sparked a new sense of urgency in the cancer research arena, large challenges remain, including a lack of coordination among researchers, an outdated research funding culture, and (no surprise here) the continued slow communication of crucial information about the disease.

Farenthold: Cyber will be next administration’s great challenge

Farenthold is one of a bipartisan group of lawmakers attempting to pass the OPEN Government Data Act, which would require that federal data be published in a machine-readable, easily navigable format. The legislation would codify President Barack Obama’s 2013 executive order on the same topic.

Vice President Biden Calls for Open Access, Open Data, & New Research Incentives for Cancer Research

Launched by the Administration in January of this year, the $1 billion Cancer Moonshot initiative aims to achieve ten years worth of progress in cancer research in half that time. Vice President Joe Biden has met with thousands of stakeholders across all sectors, seeking suggestions for how to remove the barriers that are currently blocking progress in science, research, and development.

Why Is It So Expensive to Read Academic Research?

The serials pricing crisis has been busting academic libraries’ budgets—and creating ever-widening information gaps between rich and poor countries—since the 1970s, when subscription prices to academic journals first started rising faster than the rate of inflation.

In Science, Inspiration Can Come From Unlikely Places

A mom reached out to a scientist with a novel idea for an experiment. Years later, her hunch has blossomed into a published scientific study.

The Science of the Tax-Dollar Double Dip

Much research is federally funded, but if you want to see what you paid for, that’s going to cost you—again.

Taking the online medicine

Old-fashioned ways of reporting new discoveries are holding back medical research. Some scientists are pushing for change.

Senate panel passes bill to give public access to more research

A Senate panel on Wednesday passed legislation to require certain federally funded research to be open to the public. The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee cleared the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act by voice vote, along with 10 other pieces of legislation.

FASTR Approved by Senate Committee

On July 29 the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC) unanimously passed S. 779, the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research (FASTR) Act by voice vote.

SPARC Applauds Senate Committee Action on Public Access Legislation

The Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC) today passed S. 779, the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research (FASTR) Act, unanimously by voice vote and moved it to the full Senate for consideration. This marks the first time the Senate has acted on a government-wide policy ensuring public access to the results of publicly funded research, and is an important step towards codifying the progress made by the 2013 White House OSTP Directive.

Senate panel approves public access bill

Open-access advocates are heralding a Senate panel’s approval today of a bill that would require U.S. science agencies to make the peer-reviewed research papers they fund freely available to the public. Although a similar White House policy is already in place, supporters say the bipartisan measure—if approved by both chambers of Congress and signed by the president—would ensure the requirement stands through future administrations.

Small Steps Matter: FASTR Passes Senate Committee Hurdle

It’s indeed a truism to say that changes in U.S. public policy happen slowly; entrenched interests fight against what they perceive to be radical changes, and most policymakers are reluctant to change things too quickly. As a result, most advances are incremental, with new policies building on existing ones, step by tiny step. However, over time, these tiny steps accumulate, and we look up to find that they have combined to produce meaningful progress and real change.

FASTR to be Considered by Senate Committee

After a month of intense conversations and negotiations, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC) will bring the “Fair Access to Science and Technology Research (FASTR) Act” up for mark-up on Wednesday, July 29th. The language that will be considered is an amended version of FASTR, officially known as the ‘Johnson-Carper Substitute Amendment,’ which was officially filed by the HSGAC leadership late on Friday afternoon, per committee rules.

Don’t Think Open Access Is Important? It Might Have Prevented Much Of The Ebola Outbreak

For years now, we've been talking up the importance of open access to scientific research. Big journals like Elsevier have generally fought against this at every point, arguing that its profits are more important that some hippy dippy idea around sharing knowledge. Except, as we've been trying to explain, it's that sharing of knowledge that leads to innovation and big health breakthroughs. Unfortunately, it's often pretty difficult to come up with a concrete example of what didn't happen because of locked up knowledge. And yet, it appears we have one new example that's rather stunning: it looks like the worst of the Ebola outbreak from the past few months might have been avoided if key research had been open access, rather than locked up.

“FASTR” Legislation Would Ensure Permanency of Public Access to Scientific Research

SPARC today applauded the reintroduction of the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research (FASTR) Act, which would ensure that public access to research articles becomes the law of the land.

Gates Goes Open

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will require grant recipients to make their research publicly available online -- a multibillion-dollar boost to the open access movement. The sweeping open access policy, which signals the foundation’s full-throated approval for the public availability of research, will go into effect Jan. 1, 2015, and cover all new projects made possible with funding from the foundation.

The Gates Foundation pushes to make more academic research free and open to the public

The Gates Foundation spends about $900 million each year funding scientific research — which results in about 1,400 research papers on various aspects of global health. Under the new policy, the researchers that the organization funds will only be able to publish papers that are immediately freely accessible to the public.

Gates Foundation to require immediate free access for journal articles

Breaking new ground for the open-access movement, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a major funder of global health research, plans to require that the researchers it funds publish only in journals that offer immediate open access.

California Passes Open Access Legislation

On September 29th, California Governor Jerry Brown signed AB609, The California Taxpayer Access to Publicly Funded Research Act, into law. This first-of-its-kind legislation requires that articles reporting on research funded by the California Department of Public Health be made openly available to the public through online repositories no later than 12 months after publication in a peer-reviewed journal.

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The Alliance for Taxpayer Access is comprised of a diverse group of organizations that believe taxpayer funded research should be available to those who paid for it.

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American Taxpayers are Entitled to the Research They Pay For