I 
113TH CONGRESS 
1ST SESSION 
H. R. 708 
To provide for Federal agencies to develop public access policies relating 
to research conducted by employees of that agency or from funds admin-
istered by that agency. 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
FEBRUARY 14, 2013 
Mr. DOYLE (for himself, Mr. YODER, and Ms. LOFGREN) introduced the fol-
lowing bill; which was referred to the Committee on Oversight and Gov-
ernment Reform 
A BILL 
To provide for Federal agencies to develop public access 
policies relating to research conducted by employees of 
that agency or from funds administered by that agency. 
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, 
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. 
This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Fair Access to Science 
and Technology Research Act of 2013’’. 
SEC. 2. FINDINGS. 
Congress finds that— 
(1) the Federal Government funds basic and 
applied research with the expectation that new ideas 
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and discoveries that result from the research, if 
shared and effectively disseminated, will advance 
science and improve the lives and welfare of people 
of the United States and around the world; 
(2) the Internet makes it possible for this infor-
mation to be promptly available to every scientist, 
physician, educator, and citizen at home, in school, 
or in a library; and 
(3) the United States has a substantial interest 
in maximizing the impact and utility of the research 
it funds by enabling a wide range of reuses of the 
peer-reviewed literature that reports the results of 
such research, including by enabling computational 
analysis by state-of-the-art technologies. 
SEC. 3. DEFINITION OF FEDERAL AGENCY. 
In this Act, the term ‘‘Federal agency’’ means an Ex-
ecutive agency as defined under section 105 of title 5, 
United States Code. 
SEC. 4. FEDERAL RESEARCH PUBLIC ACCESS POLICY. 
(a) REQUIREMENT TO DEVELOP POLICY.— 
(1) IN GENERAL.—Not later than 1 year after 
the date of enactment of this Act, each Federal 
agency with extramural research expenditures of 
over $100,000,000 shall develop a Federal research 
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public access policy that is consistent with and ad-
vances the purposes of the Federal agency. 
(2) COMMON
PROCEDURES.—To the extent 
practicable, Federal agencies required to develop a 
policy under paragraph (1) shall follow common pro-
cedures for the collection and depositing of research 
papers. 
(b) CONTENT.—Each Federal research public access 
policy shall provide for— 
(1) submission to the Federal agency of an elec-
tronic version of the author’s final manuscript of 
original research papers that have been accepted for 
publication in peer-reviewed journals and that result 
from research supported, in whole or in part, from 
funding by the Federal Government; 
(2) the incorporation of all changes resulting 
from the peer review publication process in the 
manuscript described under paragraph (1); 
(3) the replacement of the final manuscript 
with the final published version if— 
(A) the publisher consents to the replace-
ment; and 
(B) the goals of the Federal agency for 
functionality and interoperability are retained; 
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