Knocking down paywalls

Doing away with journal paywalls for publicly funded research appears to be one of the few things that US president Joe Biden and his predecessor Donald Trump agreed on.

In late 2019, a leaked White House memo indicated that the Trump administration was considering rolling back the 12-month publication embargo that former President Barack Obama had put in place for research papers resulting from taxpayer dollars. This would mean the immediate free distribution of scientific articles arising from US government grants. When publishers caught wind of the plan from inside contacts they mobilised straightaway.