ACRL endorses Federal Research Public Access Act

[Ray English <Ray.English@oberlin.edu>]

For Immediate Release
May 2, 2006
Contact: Ray English, Chair
CRL Scholarly Communications Committee
440-775-8287

ACRL endorses Federal Research Public Access Act

CHICAGO - The Association of College and Research Libraries
(ACRL) enthusiastically endorses The Federal Research Public
Access Act of 2006, which has been introduced into the U.S.
Senate by Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) and Senator Joe Lieberman
(D-CT). This legislation would require that federally funded
research appearing in peer-reviewed journals be made openly
accessible in digital repositories within six months of
publication.

Specifically the legislation would require:

* All federal agencies with annual extramural research budgets of 100
million or more to implement a public access policy
* Researchers funded totally or partially by those agencies to submit
electronic copies of their final peer- reviewed manuscripts that have
been accepted for publication
* Peer-reviewed manuscripts to be preserved in digital repositories
maintained by those agencies or in other suitable repositories.
* Free online access to taxpayer-funded manuscripts to be available as
soon as possible and no later than six months after publication in a
peer-reviewed journal

"The Cornyn-Lieberman bill is a landmark event in the ongoing effort to
establish public access to federally-funded research," said Ray English,
chair of ACRL's Scholarly Communications Committee.  "It's very simple -
research funded by taxpayers should be readily accessible to the public. I
encourage all academic librarians to= work actively for its passage."

The Federal Research Public Access Act would not affect copyright
laws. It also would not apply to classified research or to works
not submitted or accepted for publication. The legislation
exempts laboratory notes, preliminary data analysis, author
notes, phone logs and other information used to produce the final
manuscript.

The Act would extend and improve upon the public access policy of
the National Institutes of Health, which was implemented in May
2005. That policy is voluntary for researchers and allows up to
12 months following publication for research to be made publicly
accessible in NIH=92s PubMed Central online digital archive. NIH
estimates that only four percent of eligible research is making
its way into PubMed Central under their current policy.

ACRL will work with SPARC (The Scholarly Publishing and Academic
Resources Coalition) and the Alliance for Taxpayer Access to
support adoption of the Federal Research Public Access Act by
Congress. ACRL strongly encourages all members to ask their U.S.
senators to become co-sponsors of the Cornyn-Lieberman bill and
also to express support to their representatives.

ACRL also endorses the public access provisions of the American
Centers for CURES Act of 2005 (S.2104), introduced December 7 by
Senator Lieberman and Senator Thad Cochran (R-MS), which would
create the American Center for Cures to orchestrate focused
research and development of specific solutions to pressing
ailments and speed biomedical research and development.  The
Center=92s mission would be to translate basic research into
practical therapies.  Among its provisions, the CURES bill would
establish free public access to articles stemming from research
funded by agencies of the Department of Health and Human
Services, including the NIH, the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
The bill also would require that the research be made available
in PubMed Central within six months of publication in a
peer-reviewed journal.  It also stipulates that non-compliance
may be grounds for the sponsoring agency to refuse future
funding.

To view contact information for members of Congress, visit ALA's
online Legislative Action Center at: http://capwiz.com/ala. For
more information on the Conryn-Lieberman and CURES bills, see the
Alliance for Taxpayer Access web site at:
http://www.taxpayeraccess.org.

ACRL is a division of the American Library Association (ALA),
representing more than 13,000 academic and research librarian
and interested individuals. ACRL is the only individual
membership organization in North America that develops programs,
products and services to meet the unique needs of academic and
research librarians. Its initiatives enable the higher education
community to understand the role that academic libraries play in
the teaching, learning and research environments.


---2071850956-299222781-1146699678=:16770--