Academic institutions propose federated system for public-access research

Chronicle of Higher Education : Earlier this year the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy issued a directive requiring papers resulting from federally funded research to be publicly available within 12 months of publication. The Association of American Universities, the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities, and the Association of Research Libraries are offering a plan they call the Shared Access Research Ecosystem (SHARE) to meet the 22 August deadline for proposals. SHARE would build on currently existing systems at individual universities and research institutions by developing a network of publicly accessible repositories maintained by the individual organizations. The system would also include a unique identification code for principle investigators, and all publications would include copyright license information in their metadata. A similar system has been proposed by academic publishing institutions, with the maintenance of the system in the hands of the publishers, not the research organizations.