Should mandatory open access be extended to all federally funded research?

Please note that this post is from 2010. Evaluate with care and in light of later events.

I think this would be a great idea:

Although there have been sporadic attempts to reverse the policy, it has been considered so successful that the US Office of Science and Technology Policy requested public input on an extension of the rules to all federally funded research. Now, a consortium of US research institutions is putting its weight behind an effort to turn the potential OSTP policy into law.

via Universities, Congress push Open Access Research law.

Open access is not without its challenges (note: putting publishers out of business is not one of them), but it’s incredibly useful. I’d love to see this kind of policy extended beyond science and into other fields as well (although most other fields do not receive the kind of federal money that science does).