Public Access Mandate Made Law

[Jennifer McLennan <jennifer@arl.org>]

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
Medicine=B9s 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," said David Shulenburger,
Vice President for Academic Affairs at NASULGC (the National
Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges).
'Improved 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.'

"Years of unrelenting commitment and dedication by patient groups
and our allies in the research community have at last borne
fruit," said Sharon Terry, President and CEO of Genetic Alliance.
"We=B9re 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."

"Congress has just unlocked the taxpayers' $29 billion investment
in NIH," said Heather Joseph, Executive Director of SPARC (the
Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, a founding
member of the ATA). "This 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, "On behalf of the Alliance for Taxpayer Access, I'd
like to thank everyone who worked so hard over the past several
years to bring about implementation of this much-needed policy."

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.