The NIH Public Access Policy and Federally Funded Research: An Analysis of Problem Recognition and Agenda Setting

This interpretive and descriptive study examines the development of the U.S. National Institute of Health's (NIH) public access policy which requires NIH funded research to be made publicly available through an open access depository, the PubMed Central database. Using elements of Kingdon's (2003) multiple streams framework, Stone's (2012) challenges to the theory of free market efficiency, and her rhetorical characterization of “good weak interests” vs. “bad strong interests,” this work explores the rationale behind the development of the NIH open access policy . Based upon this rationale and the current structure of the scholarly publishing system, future implications for other federally or publicly funded research are proposed.