1. Measure Would Require Free Access To Results of NIH-Funded Research

By Rick Weiss, Washington Post Staff Writer, Friday, December 21, 2007

It is barely a drop of ink in the gargantuan omnibus spending bill that Congress just passed. But a provision that would give the public free access to the results of federally funded biomedical research represents a sweet victory for a coalition of researchers and activists who lobbied for the language for years.

Under the bill's terms, scientists getting grant money from the National Institutes of Health would now have to submit to the NIH a final copy of their research papers when those papers are accepted for publication in a journal. An NIH database would then post those papers, free to the public, within 12 months after publication.

The idea is that taxpayers, who have already paid for the research, should not have to subscribe to expensive scientific journals to read about the results.

Read the full article in the Washington Post online.

2. Success! NIH Provision Remains Intact

Library Journal Academic Newswire, December 20, 2007

Librarians today are set to ring in the New Year with the nation's first ever public access mandate. Both the House of Representatives and Senate this week approved the revised Labor Health and Human Services (LHHS) appropriations bill which leaves intact a directive for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) requiring investigators to deposit their final papers in PubMed Central. Papers will then be available within a year after publication. All that's left is the president's signature, which is expected, and could come this week.

The approval caps a several years-long fight spearheaded by SPARC, to make public access a requirement for NIH grantees.