Victory for Open Access

Last night, the US Senate approved the Labor-HHS appropriations bill that includes a provision requiring all NIH funded studies to be available free of charge (i.e. Open Access). Furthermore, the bill passed 75-19 preventing any possibility of a veto. And the Inhofe amendments? From Open Access News:

Inhofe withdrew his anti-OA amendments earlier in the day and as a result the bill passed with the OA mandate for the NIH intact. However, Inhofe did file a "colloquy" (statement for the record to be included as part of the legislative history) objecting to the NIH provision and asking the House-Senate conference committee to reconsider it.

More like this

On Monday, the U.S. Senate voted to pass 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 vote…
As you probably know, today the US Senate votes on amendments sponsored by Senator Inhofe (Rep. - OK) which would effectively nullify parts of the the bill (FY08 Labor-HHS Bill) that would require all NIH funded work to be published in a media freely accessible to the public (i.e. Open Access).…
E-mail I got yesterday - please spread this around ASAP: -------------------------------- The Senate is currently considering the FY08 Labor-HHS Bill, which includes a provision (already approved by the House of Representatives and the full Senate Appropriations Committee), that directs the NIH to…
Yes I'm over a week late - this occurred when I was taking a year-end blogging break. The new legislation, signed into law by GWB states that if your research is funded by the NIH, any manuscript you produce must be deposited in PubMed Central within 12 months of the publication date. From Open…

the government should stay the fuck out of micromanagement decisions about science like this

By douchebag (not verified) on 24 Oct 2007 #permalink

So the government shouldn't ensure that the public benefits from science funded by tax payer money?

I guess in your world the government should just throw money willy-nilly at public projects, and not care how it is spent.