Major Victory For Open Access

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 Access news [posted December 26th]:

This morning President Bush signed the omnibus spending bill requiring the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) to mandate OA for NIH-funded research.

Here's the language that just became law:

The Director of the National Institutes of Health shall require that all investigators funded by the NIH submit or have submitted for them to the National Library of Medicine's PubMed Central an electronic version of their final, peer-reviewed manuscripts upon acceptance for publication to be made publicly available no later than 12 months after the official date of publication: Provided, That the NIH shall implement the public access policy in a manner consistent with copyright law.

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Here's a fast recap: In July 2007 (for the second time) the House of Representatives adopted an appropriations bill requiring an OA mandate at the NIH. In October 2007 (for the first time) the Senate adopted the same language. In November, President Bush vetoed the bill for reasons unrelated to the NIH provision, and the House failed to muster enough votes to override the veto. Congress responded by combining many of the vetoed appropriations into one omnibus bill, cutting spending down to levels that the President could accept, and retaining the NIH provision without modification.