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
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.
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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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