Open Access News

News from the open access movement


Friday, March 02, 2007

Lobbying for access

Mary Alice Baish, Librarians as Change Agents: How You Can Help Influence Public Policy in the 110th Congress, Searcher, March 2007.  Baish is the Associate Washington Affairs Representative of the American Association of Law Libraries.  Excerpt:

...While the 109th Congress was ruled more by acrimony than a spirit of collegiality and bipartisanship, the library community in fact worked very well with members of both parties on such important issues as freedom of information and access to government-sponsored research. Nonetheless, leadership changes in both the House and the Senate bode very well for many of the issues that the national library associations and allied organizations have supported during the past few years....

[L]et’s take a look at some of the key issues of concern to the library community....

The Federal Research Public Access Act was introduced on May 2, 2006, by Senators John Corny and Joseph Lieberman. The bill requires that agencies with federally funded research budgets of more than $100 million enact policies to ensure that articles are made available online within 6 months of publication. It also requires that every researcher using agency funds submit an electronic copy of the final manuscript to the agency that provided the funding after the work has been accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal. The agency is responsible for providing open public access to the information and ensuring the preservation of the manuscript in a stable, digital repository. The bill was referred to the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, now chaired by Sen. Lieberman, so we hope to see quick progress in moving it forward in 2007....