‘The law is the true embodiment of everything that's excellent’: mandates – a view from the United States

Effective as of 7 April 2008, scientific articles accepted for publication or published that draw upon work done with the financial support of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the United States are subject to a sweeping new mandate – the first of its kind – that alters the circumstances under which they are published and read.This paper will review the mandate and the way American institutions are responding to it, after which we will consider mandates on the US scene and their downstream implications.