NIH Research Access Mandate
The newly enacted Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2007 (H.R. 2764) 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.
Under the Act, researchers will now be required to deposit electronic copies of their peer-reviewed manuscripts into the National Library of Medicine’s 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. From ATA report:
“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.”
Further reading:
NIH Public Access Policy - Not Mandatory Yet
access, government information, open access PubMed CentralPosted: January 15th, 2008 under access.
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