The House of Representatives yesterday [July 19] approved a bill mandating that all agency-funded research be made freely available within a year of publication.
Anyone who's ever had to finagle access to expensively firewalled journal articles knows how great this is. And heck, I usually want the articles for a story or my own science geek entertainment. Do this for doctors and researchers, and a lot of good could come out of it.
(If that doesn't move you, just be selfish. We funded the research, so we deserve to see it. And no whining about government meddling -- under the current NIH Public Access Policy, which stipulates the same thing but makes it voluntary, only 5% of eligible manuscripts are submitted to the public.)
A similar bill will be considered by the Senate later this summer. So look up your own senators and send 'em an email: free the science!
Posted by
Peter Suber at 7/22/2007 01:35:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
