Ok, so maybe I'm missing something, but what's new here? Is it just the portal?
I've been reading NASA technical papers and publications for years, and although most of the research I was reading was very focused in a specific field, everything I wanted to see was freely available. Even some of the publications linked in the article have been online for a decent amount of time.
I've read NASA tech reports for years too; seems like one of those things that's "always" been online, though I don't know when precisely it went online. It's been online long enough, at least, to have even accumulated some episodes of backlash. In 2013, it was forced offline for a few months, because Congresspeople claimed that it might include content The Chinese could use to reconstruct national-security-sensitive information, so demanded that reports undergo a security audit: http://fas.org/blogs/secrecy/2013/03/ntrs_dark/
I've been reading NASA technical papers and publications for years, and although most of the research I was reading was very focused in a specific field, everything I wanted to see was freely available. Even some of the publications linked in the article have been online for a decent amount of time.