Excerpt:

The NIH Public Access Policy applies to all peer-reviewed articles that arise, in whole or in part, from direct costs funded by NIH, or from NIH staff, that are accepted for publication on or after April 7, 2008. Institutions and investigators are responsible for ensuring that any publishing or copyright agreements concerning submitted articles fully comply with this Policy.

PubMed Central (PMC) is the NIH digital archive of full-text, peer-reviewed journal articles. Its content is publicly accessible and integrated with other databases (see: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/). The final, peer-reviewed manuscript includes all graphics and supplemental materials that are associated with the article.

Beginning May 25, 2008, anyone submitting an application, proposal or progress report to the NIH must include the PMC or NIH Manuscript Submission reference number when citing applicable articles that arise from their NIH funded research. This policy includes applications submitted to the NIH for the May 25, 2008 due date and subsequent due dates.

Read the full notice for more information.

The HAM-TMC Library is developing methodologies to help you streamline your research processes, including helping you comply with this new NIH Policy. Please stay tuned!

Alliance for Taxpayer Access
For immediate release December 26, 2007
Contact: Jennifer McLennan; (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 Medicine¹s 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're 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.

###

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 here.

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.

From Peter Suber:

Christine L. Borgman: Data, disciplines, and scholarly publishing. Learned Publishing, Volume 21, Number 1, January 2008, pp. 29-38. Only this abstract is free online.

Abstract: Data are becoming an essential product of scholarship, complementing the roles of journal articles, papers, and books. Research data can be reused to ask new questions, to replicate studies, and to verify research findings. Data become even more valuable when linked to publications and other related resources to form a value chain. Types and uses of data vary widely between disciplines, as do the online availability of publications and the incentives of scholars to publish their data. Publishers, scholars, and librarians each have roles to play in constructing a new scholarly information infrastructure for e-research. Technical, policy, and institutional components are maturing; the next steps are to integrate them into a coherent whole. Achieving a critical mass of datasets in public repositories, with links to and from publisher databases, is the most promising solution to maintaining and sustaining the scholarly record in digital form.

From Peter Subers Open Access News Blog:

Bush vetoes LHHS appropriations bill

The headline says it all, but here's some detail from Jennifer Loven for the Associated Press:

President Bush, escalating his budget battle with Congress, on Tuesday vetoed a spending measure for health and education programs prized by congressional Democrats....

The president's action was announced on Air Force One as Bush flew to New Albany, Ind., on the Ohio River across from Louisville, Ky., for a speech criticizing the Democratic-led Congress on its budget priorities.

In excerpts of his remarks released in advance by the White House, Bush hammered Democrats for what he called a tax-and-spend philosophy....

More than any other spending bill, the $606 billion education and health measure defines the differences between Bush and majority Democrats. The House fell three votes short of winning a veto-proof margin as it sent the measure to Bush.

Rep. David Obey, the Democratic chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, pounced immediately on Bush's veto.

"This is a bipartisan bill supported by over 50 Republicans," Obey said. "There has been virtually no criticism of its contents. It is clear the only reason the president vetoed this bill is pure politics."

Since winning re-election, Bush has sought to cut the labor, health and education measure below the prior year level. But lawmakers have rejected the cuts. The budget that Bush presented in February sought almost $4 billion in cuts to this year's bill.

Democrats responded by adding $10 billion to Bush's request for the 2008 bill. Democrats say spending increases for domestic programs are small compared with Bush's pending war request totaling almost $200 billion....

Comments from Peter Suber:

First, don't panic. This has been expected for months and the fight is not over. Here's a reminder from my November newsletter: "There are two reasons not to despair if President Bush vetoes the LHHS appropriations bill later this month. If Congress overrides the veto, then the OA mandate language will become law. Just like that. If Congress fails to override the veto, and modifies the LHHS appropriation instead, then the OA mandate is likely to survive intact." (See the rest of the newsletter for details on both possibilities.)

Also expected: Bush vetoed the bill for spending more than he wants to spend, not for its OA provision.

Second, it's time for US citizens to contact their Congressional delegations again. This time around, contact your Representative in the House as well as your two Senators. The message is: vote yes on an override of the President's veto of the LHHS appropriations bill. (Note that the LHHS appropriations bill contains much more than the provision mandating OA at the NIH.) The override votes --one in each chamber-- haven't yet been scheduled. They may come this week or they may be delayed until after Thanksgiving. But they will come and it's not too early to contact your Congressional delegation. For the contact info for your representatives (phone, email, fax, local offices), see CongressMerge.

Please spread the word!

Posted by Peter Suber at 11/13/2007 11:46:00 AM.

The U.S Senate last night passed the FY08 Conference Report for LHHS.

Despite democratic efforts to tie the LHHS bill with a funding bill for veterans and military construction programs, Senate Republicans were successful in their efforts to split the bills.

The $152 billion LHHS bill, which includes public access provisions, will go back to the House for one more vote before going to the President later this week.The President has vowed to veto the bill, due to concerns over the higher funding levels. As neither the House nor the Senate has a veto proof majority, additional compromise will be necessary. The Congress is *also* moving a bill to extend the fiscal year through mid-December, providing additional time to negotiate a compromise. We'll continue to work with key policy makers to ensure that the NIH public access provisions are protected as this process moves along.

Heather Joseph, Executive Director, SPARC

-- Posted By Karen Butter to AAHSL Scholarly Communication Committee Blog at 11/08/2007 08:05:00 AM

Full U.S. Senate Approves Bill Containing Support for Access To Taxpayer-Funded Research

Washington, D.C. ­ October 24, 2007 - The U.S. Senate last night approved the FY2008 Labor, HHS, and Education Appropriations Bill (S.1710), including a provision that directs the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to strengthen its Public Access Policy by requiring rather than requesting participation by researchers. The bill will now be reconciled with the House Appropriations Bill, which contains a similar provision, in another step toward support for public access to publicly funded research becoming United States law.

"Last night's Senate action is a milestone victory for public access to taxpayer-funded research," said Heather Joseph, Executive Director of SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, a founding member of the ATA). "This policy sets the stage for researchers, patients, and the general public to benefit in new and important ways from our collective investment in the critical biomedical research conducted by the NIH."

Under a mandatory policy, NIH-funded researchers will be required to deposit copies of eligible manuscripts into the National Library of Medicine's online database, PubMed Central. Articles will be made publicly available no later than 12 months after publication in a peer-reviewed journal.

The current NIH Public Access Policy, first implemented in 2005, is a voluntary measure and has resulted in a deposit rate of less than 5% by individual investigators. The advance to a mandatory policy is the result of more than two years of monitoring and evaluation by the NIH, Congress, and the community.

"We thank our Senators for taking action on this important issue," said Pat Furlong, Founding President and CEO of Parent Project Muscular Dystrophy. "This level of access to NIH-funded research will impact the disease process in novel ways, improving the ability of scientists to advance therapies and enabling patients and their advocates to participate more effectively. The advance is timely, much-needed, and ­ we anticipate ­ an indication of increasingly enhanced access in future."

"American businesses will benefit tremendously from improved access to NIH research," said William Kovacs, U.S. Chamber of Commerce vice president for environment, technology and regulatory affairs. "The Chamber encourages the free and timely dissemination of scientific knowledge produced by the NIH as it will improve both the public and industry¹s ability to become better informed on developments that impact them ­ and on opportunities for innovation." The Chamber is the world's largest business federation, representing more than three million businesses of every size, sector, and region.

"We welcome the NIH policy being made mandatory and thank Congress for backing this important step," said Gary Ward, Treasurer of the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB). "Free and timely public access to scientific literature is necessary to ensure that new discoveries are made as quickly as feasible. It's the right thing to do, given that taxpayers fund this research." The ASCB represents 11,000 members and publishes the highly ranked peer-reviewed journal, Molecular Biology of the Cell.

Joseph added, "On behalf of the taxpayers, patients, researchers, students, libraries, universities, and businesses that pressed this bill forward with their support over the past two years, the ATA thanks Congress for throwing its weight behind the success of taxpayer access to taxpayer-funded research."

Negotiators from the House and Senate are expected to meet to reconcile their respective bills this fall. The final, consolidated bill will have to pass the House and the Senate before being delivered to the President at the end of the year.

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.

--------------------------
Jennifer McLennan
Director of Communications
SPARC

Press Release from the university of Liege
On Thursday, October 18, the Rector of the University of Liege hosted the Rectors of the Universities of Trieste and Rome 2, Roma 3, Polytechnic of Catalonia in Barcelona, Vicenza, Porto, from Salford, Lancaster, Rotterdam (U. Erasmus), Turin, Antwerp, Ghent and Southampton, as well as the chairmen or directors of the Paul Ehrlich Institute, the Instituto Superiore di Sanita, Caspur Consortium, the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and a representative of the European Commission .

The purpose of the meeting was to establish the foundations of a European movement for Open Access to scientific and scholarly publications: EurOpenScholarship.

The Rector of U. Liege has been involved in the movement to free research publications from the financial straitjacket imposed on universities and research centers by the large publishers. Since 1993, while the price index rose by about 30%, journal prices have risen to more than 275%, making it impossible for a normally funded institution to access all the literature essential for conducting good research.

Despite the Berlin Declaration in 2003 and the European Petition of 2007, few universities have actually implemented a vigorous open access policy. That is why the Chancellor of U. Liege wanted to gather in Liege the senior leadership of the European universities that are the most advanced in this respect and to launch an initiative that provides a practical follow-up to the declaration already signed by so many research institutions.

The meeting resulted in the creation of the EurOpenScholarship whose goal will be to continue efforts by informing the European university communities about the opportunities available to researchers today for providing open access, as well as to establish, in the universities and research centers in Europe, a central institutional repository (in Liege, "DIGITHEQUE"), allowing publications to be deposited and, wherever possible, made openly accessible to all.

The University of Liege, which signed a massive OA petition in 2007 (the highest number of signatures from a single university) is positioning itself as a pioneer and clearly much of this is now considered the way of the future for scientific publication. The ambition is to spread this message across Europe.

Max Planck Society terminates licensing contract with Springer publishing house
Heise Online, October 19, 2007

Following several fruitless rounds of talks the Max Planck Society (MPG ) has, effective January 1, 2008, terminated the online contract with the Springer publishing house which for eight years now has given all institutes electronic access to some 1,200 scientific journals. The analysis of user statistics and comparisons with other important publishing houses had shown that Springer was charging twice the amount the MPG still considered justifiable for access to the journals, the Society declared. "And that 'justifiable' rate is still higher than comparable offers of other major publishing houses," a spokesman of the Max Planck Digital Library told Heise Online....

According to the MPG the failure of the talks with Springer marks "what for now is the high point" in a dispute with a number of globally operating scientific publishing houses. The soaring prices in the scientific information domain have already caused a change of attitude in a number of players. Thus MPG is one of the initiators of the "Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and the Humanities" -- the key demand of which is open access to the results of publicly funded research -- which to date has been signed by more than 240 scientific organizations.

When publishing houses have the market power to charge excessive prices and the legislator is unwilling to subject such inappropriate behavior to any form of legal control the only course that remains is for the scientific community to take matters into its own hands, the MPG stated. "Even at the very last minute the Springer publishing house had not been prepared to lower its inflated prices," MPG Vice President Kurt Mehlhorn said. "The MPG therefore had had no other option but to terminate the contract," he added.

Posted By Peter Suber to Open Access News at 10/19/2007 11:22:00 A

Additional note from George S. Porter, California Institute of Technology:

The Max Planck Society, for those unfamiliar, operates 80 research institutes with more than 12,000 staff members and 9,000 Ph.D. students, post-docs, guest scientists and researchers, and student assistants. Last week's Nobel prizes honored Gerhard Ertl (Chemistry, Fritz Haber Institute) and the UN IPCC (Peace, Max-Planck-Institute for Meteorology).

In US-centric terms, my interpretation is that this is roughly equivalent to all of the National Institutes of Health, the DoE labs (Los Alamos, Livermore, Fermi, Brookhaven, etc.), and the NASA research centers (JPL, Dryden, Langley, Glenn, Ames, etc.) cancelling all Springer titles for all locations.

October 4, 2007

Anti-Open-Access Effort by Publishing Group Loses Another University Press

Another top university press has registered its displeasure with Prism, a controversial anti-open-access lobbying effort undertaken by the Association of American Publishers. Ellen Faran, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, has resigned from the executive council of the association's Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division. Even so, Ms. Faran told The Chronicle in an e-mail message, "The Prism Web site continues to give the incorrect impression that it has the unanimous support of the Executive Council."

The Web site states that Prism, or the Partnership for Research Integrity in Science and Medicine, "was established by the Executive Council of the Professional & Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American Publishers (AAP) to educate policy makers and the American people about the risks posed by government intervention in scholarly publishing." The group has made some language changes elsewhere on the site since the first round of publishers' protests.

Ms. Faran's exit from the executive council follows that of James D. Jordan, president and director of Columbia University Press, who stepped down on August 28, five days after Prism went public. Mr. Jordan told The Chronicle that he had resigned in part "because I had vocally opposed the launch of the Prism Web site and did not subscribe to arguments supporting it." Other academic publishers, including Cambridge University Press and Rockefeller University Press, have also publicly criticized Prism. --Jennifer Howard

Posted on Thursday October 4, 2007
Copyright © 2007 by The Chronicle of Higher Education

Brown Bag Lecture: Copyright and You, Part Two

Tuesday, October 2, 2007
11:00 am - 12:30 pm
Kyle Morrow Room, 3rd Floor of Fondren Library, Rice University

Fondren Library, Rice University, and the Houston Academy of Medicine- Texas Medical Center Library invite faculty and students to a presentation by Joe Davidson, Associate General Counsel, Rice University.

Joe Davidson will provide a follow-up to the "Copyright and You (April 2007)" overview of U.S. copyright and how it might impact you as an author, researcher, and instructor. How does copyright affect how you use your own material? How do institutional copyright policies impact you? Explore issues of creative commons, retaining author rights, and fair use.

Come hear Joe's overview and participate in a discussion of how laws and policy impact research and teaching.

Beverages and box lunches (25, first come first choice) will be provided.

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This lecture is jointly sponsored by Fondren Library and the HAM-TMC Library, as part of an ongoing series of events examining the changes in scholarly communication and publishing.

For more information about the brown bag, contact Debra Kolah, dbailey@rice.edu, 713.348.2350.