Let me take the unusual step of repeating a call to action from yesterday in case it got buried in the avalanche of news.
The House Appropriations Committee approved language establishing an OA mandate at the NIH. The full House is scheduled to vote on the appropriations bill containing that language on Tuesday, July 17.
Publishers are lobbying hard to delete this language. If you are a US citizen and support public access for publicly-funded research, please ask your representative to support this bill, and to oppose any attempt to amend or strike the language. Contact your representative now, before you forget.
Time is short. Offices are closed on the weekend, but emails and faxes will go through. Send an email or fax right now or telephone before Monday afternoon.
Because the Senate Appropriations Committee approved the same language in June, you should contact your Senators with the same message. But the vote by the full House is in three days, while the vote by the full Senate has not yet been scheduled.
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.
