Congressional Panel Favors Access to Publicly Funded Research

[Jennifer McLennan <jennifer@arl.org>]

Alliance for Taxpayer Access
www.taxpayeraccess.org

For immediate release
June 28, 2007

Contact:
Jennifer McLennan
jennifer [at] arl [dot] org
(202) 296-2296 ext. 121

CONGRESSIONAL PANEL FAVORS ACCESS TO PUBLICLY FUNDED RESEARCH

Washington, D.C. -- June 28, 2007 -- Public access to NIH-funded
research took a major step forward this week with Senate
Appropriations Committee agreement to direct the National
Institutes of Health (NIH) to require that its funded research be
made publicly available on the Internet.

This milestone was immediately praised by the Alliance for
Taxpayer Access (ATA), a coalition of patient groups,
researchers, consumers, and libraries that has long called for
such a step.

"The momentum is real and Congress understands the public's
interest," said Heather Joseph, Executive Director of SPARC (the
Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, an ATA
founding member). "We congratulate Senators Tom Harkin and Arlen
Specter for their bipartisan leadership on this issue."

"It is significant that Senate appropriators are determined to
leverage the taxpayer investment in research by ensuring it can
be broadly applied," added Joseph. "Two years after the
well-intentioned voluntary NIH policy was introduced, too many
researchers, students, small businesses, and people facing
diseases still lack access to the publicly funded research they
want and need. This is a big step in the right direction."

The Senate's 2008 appropriations bill specifically requires that
NIH-funded researchers deposit in the National Library of
Medicine=B9s online archive an electronic copy of their
peer-reviewed manuscripts upon acceptance for publication in a
journal. Articles would become publicly available no later than
12 months after publication.

"Action by our Senators in supporting this change is especially
welcomed by the patient community,: said Colleen Zak, Executive
Director of the Autosomal Recessive Polycystic Kidney Disease and
Congenital Hepatic Fibrosis (ARPKD/CHF) Alliance. "Delivering on
the NIH public access policy will create anticipated
opportunities for accelerating research and finding cures."

Under the current NIH Public Access Policy, implemented in May
2005, investigators have deposited less than five percent of
eligible manuscripts and, although a few publishers have also
deposited articles stemming from NIH-funded research, the vast
majority is not yet publicly available.

Congress has expressed concern about the voluntary policy's
failure to meet its goals. However, this is the first time the
Senate committee has proposed legislative action to correct the
situation. The Senate measure is similar to one recently put
forth by the House of Representatives Labor/HHS Appropriations
Subcommittee.

The FY08 Senate Appropriations Bill is expected to go before the
full Senate for a vote later this summer. The House Labor/HHS
Appropriations measure will be considered by the full House
Appropriations Committee in July.

# # #

The Alliance for Taxpayer Access is a coalition of patient,
academic, research, and publishing organizations that support
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