Important Open Access Development

["Hamaker, Chuck" <cahamake@email.uncc.edu>]

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-acrleads@ala.org [mailto:owner-acrleads@ala.org] On Behalf
Of Ray English
Sent: Thursday, July 15, 2004 12:13 PM
To: ACRL Leads

To: All ACRL Members and Other Interested Parties

There has been a very important development in Washington related to open
access.

Yesterday the House of Representatives Appropriations Committee approved
report language recommending that the National Institutes of Health
provide free public access to research articles resulting from NIH-funded
research.  The Committee Report accompanying the FY 2005 Labor, HHS,
Education and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill recommends that NIH
offer access to authors' final manuscripts (as accepted for journal
publication) and supplemental materials through PubMed Central six months
after publication.  If the grantee used NIH funds to pay any publication
charges (e.g., page or color charges, or fees for digital distribution),
PMC access would be immediate. The Report instructs NIH to inform the
Committee by December 1, 2004 how it intends to implement the policy.

This proposal is supports the fundamental principle that the public should
have open access to taxpayer-funded research.  The Report language had
bipartisan support in the House Appropriations Committee.  The language
could, however, be changed in a final conference version with the Senate.

ACRL, through the Open Access Working Group (an alliance of several
library associations and other groups that favor open access), will be
working to gain endorsement of the proposal in the Senate.  Please stay
tuned for further information on what you can do to support this
encouraging development.

Ray English, Chair
ACRL Scholarly Communications Committee