[LIS-Forum] Fwd: Public Access Mandate Made Law (fwd)

[Subbiah Arunachalam]

Friends:

The US President has mandated open access to all
research papers resulting from NIH funds. Long ago six
of the seven research councils in the UK have mandated
OA for publicly funded research. The Wellcome Trust
has also mandated OA for all research funded by it. 

When are we going to mandate OA for research funded by
Indian taxpayers?

Regards.

Arun
[Subbiah Arunachalam]



> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Wed, 26 Dec 2007 15:17:35 -0500
> From: Jennifer McLennan <jennifer -- arl.org>
> Subject: [ATA-MEMBERS] Public Access Mandate Made
> Law
> 
> Alliance for Taxpayer Access
> www.taxpayeraccess.org
> 
> For immediate release
> December 26, 2007
> 
> Contact:
> Jennifer McLennan
> jennifer [at] arl [dot] org
> (202) 296-2296 ext. 121
> 
> PUBLIC ACCESS MANDATE MADE LAW
> President Bush signs omnibus appropriations bill,
> including National Institutes of Health research
> access provision
> 
> Washington, D.C. ­ December 26, 2007 ­ President
> Bush has signed into law
> the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2007 (H.R.
> 2764), which includes a
> provision directing the National Institutes of
> Health (NIH) to provide the
> public with open online access to findings from its
> funded research. This is
> the first time the U.S. government has mandated
> public access to research
> funded by a major agency.
> 
> The provision directs the NIH to change its existing
> Public Access Policy,
> implemented as a voluntary measure in 2005, so that
> participation is
> required for agency-funded investigators.
> Researchers will now be required
> to deposit electronic copies of their peer-reviewed
> manuscripts into the
> National Library of Medicine¹s online archive,
> PubMed Central. Full texts of
> the articles will be publicly available and
> searchable online in PubMed
> Central no later than 12 months after publication in
> a journal.
> 
> "Facilitated access to new knowledge is key to the
> rapid advancement of
> science," said Harold Varmus, president of the
> Memorial Sloan-Kettering
> Cancer Center and Nobel Prize Winner. "The
> tremendous benefits of broad,
> unfettered access to information are already clear
> from the Human Genome
> Project, which has made its DNA sequences
> immediately and freely available
> to all via the Internet. Providing widespread
> access, even with a one-year
> delay, to the full text of research articles
> supported by funds from all
> institutes at the NIH will increase those benefits
> dramatically."
> 
> "Public access to publicly funded research
> contributes directly to the
> mission of higher education,² said David
> Shulenburger, Vice President for
> Academic Affairs at NASULGC (the National
> Association of State Universities
> and Land-Grant Colleges). ³Improved access will
> enable universities to
> maximize their own investment in research, and widen
> the potential for
> discovery as the results are more readily available
> for others to build
> upon.²
> 
> ³Years of unrelenting commitment and dedication by
> patient groups and our
> allies in the research community have at last borne
> fruit,² said Sharon
> Terry, President and CEO of Genetic Alliance. ³We¹re
> proud of Congress for
> their unrelenting commitment to ensuring the success
> of public access to
> NIH-funded research. As patients, patient advocates,
> and families, we look
> forward to having expanded access to the research we
> need.²
> 
> ³Congress has just unlocked the taxpayers¹ $29
> billion investment in NIH,²
> said Heather Joseph, Executive Director of SPARC
> (the Scholarly Publishing
> and Academic Resources Coalition, a founding member
> of the ATA). ³This
> policy will directly improve the sharing of
> scientific findings, the pace of
> medical advances, and the rate of return on benefits
> to the taxpayer."
> 
> Joseph added, ³On behalf of the Alliance for
> Taxpayer Access, I¹d like to
> thank everyone who worked so hard over the past
> several years to bring about
> implementation of this much-needed policy.²
> 
> For more information, and a timeline detailing the
> evolution of the NIH
> Public Access Policy beginning May 2004, visit the
> ATA Web site at
> http://www.taxpayeraccess.org.
> 
> ###
> 
> The Alliance for Taxpayer Access is a coalition of
> patient, academic,
> research, and publishing organizations that supports
> open public access to
> the results of federally funded research. The
> Alliance was formed in 2004 to
> urge that peer-reviewed articles stemming from
> taxpayer-funded research
> become fully accessible and available online at no
> extra cost to the
> American public. Details on the ATA may be found at
> http://www.taxpayeraccess.org.
> 
> 
> -- 
> Jennifer McLennan
> Director of Communications
> SPARC
> (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources
> Coalition)
> http://www.arl.org/sparc
> (202) 296-2296 ext 121
> jennifer -- arl.org
> 



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