Doyle: Publicly funded research should be publicly available

You paid for it. You shouldn’t have to pay to read it.

That’s Congressman Mike Doyle’s attitude about federally funded research.

Today he introduced legislation that would require reports generated by federally funded research projects to be made available online within six months of publication of articles in scholarly journals.

“Americans have the right to see the results of research funded with taxpayer dollars,” Mr. Doyle, D-Forest Hills said. “Such research too often gets locked away behind a pay-wall, forcing those who want to learn from it to pay expensive subscription fees for access.”

His bill would apply to federal agencies with annual research budgets of $100 million or more.

Mr. Doyle introduced similar legislation during the last session of Congress. He has been working since 2006 to ensure that taxpayers can access research they’ve paid for.