NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and federal securities regulators have reached an agreement on a new framework for research by analysts at major Wall Street brokerages, according to a published report.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Spitzer and Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement chief Stephen Cutler laid out the proposal to major securities firms at a meeting at the SEC office Thursday. The proposal calls for the investment banks to jointly fund research by outside research firms in addition to their own, and for that outside research to be made available to their individual investor clients along with any in-house research, the Journal reported.

The paper said that the top Wall Street firms would have to pay $1 billion collectively over the next five years to fund the research. The agreement would also create a panel to oversee the independent stock research.

According to the report, the deal would also require greater separation of the Wall Street firms' own in-house research operations from their investment banking operations, although that proposal does not go as far as some critics of current research practices had hoped. Research analyst compensation would be tied to the quality of their research, not to the firm's investment banking relationships, and they wouldn't be allowed to share advance of draft reports or research ratings with the firm's investment bankers, according to the Journal.

But the paper said that there aren't yet any specified limits on analysts' contact with companies doing initial public offerings of stock, mergers and other financing transactions. And it said that the research departments would draw on the total revenue of the firm, which the paper said would allow analysts to share indirectly in investment-banking fees.

Spitzer has led the charge in challenging Wall Street firms to change their research practices. He won a $100 million settlement from leading broker Merrill Lynch & Co. after he revealed e-mails and other internal correspondence that showed analysts were pressured to give an overly positive view of firms whose fundamentals they questioned in order to help the firm win investment banking business.

Similar probes are under way by Spitzer's office about research at other major investment banks. The proposed agreement would be a way of settling those probes.