They already do. Here are links to the major US funding agency's policies. NIH Public Access Policy: https://publicaccess.nih.gov/policy.htm https://publicacc

They already do. Here are links to the major US funding agency's policies. NIH Public Access Policy: https://publicaccess.nih.gov/policy.htm https://publicaccess.nih.gov/policy.htm NSF: https://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/public_access/ https://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/public_access/ DOE: https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2014/08/f18/DOE_Public_Access%20Plan_FINAL.pdf https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2014/08/f18/DOE_Publ... DoD: https://discover.dtic.mil/products-services/ https://discover.dtic.mil/products-services/ PubMedCentral (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/) hosts full-text for biomedical journals that don't automatically provide un-paywalled access to covered articles, as does DTIC. The one caveat is that there is an optional one year embargo for journals that aren't open access. You can often find PDFs on researchers' home pages, and preprints are increasingly common too.