NIH Access Policy Becomes Law

As we previously blogged, the U.S. House and Senate have approved appropriations language for the National Institutes of Health stating:

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.

The provision is part of the much larger 2008 Consolidated Appropriations bill (H.R. 2764) signed into law by President Bush on 26 December 2007.

For further information, see the Alliance for Taxpayer Access (ATA) press release. SLA is a member of the ATA.