NetCoalition has released its September 19, 2007, letter to the Senate, supporting an OA mandate at the NIH. Here it is in full:
On behalf of the nation's leading Internet companies, I am writing to ask for your support for adoption of the National Institutes of Health's public access policy as part of S. 1710, the FY2008 Labor, Heath, and Human Services and Education and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill, or any other appropriate legislation.
The proposed public access policy would require NIH-funded researchers to deposit copies of articles resulting from NIH funded research into the online archive of the National Library of Medicine, PubMed Central, no later than twelve months after publication in a peer-reviewed journal.
It is the mission of NetCoalition companies to help their users locate and access the information they need. The NIH public access policy would further this mission by placing valuable publicly-funded medical research in an online location where search engines operated by NetCoalition members could index and link to it.
The public access policy thus would simultaneously assist broad dissemination of important healthcare information and growth of the Internet. The NIH public access policy has been thoroughly vetted during the three years it has been before Congress. The House included it in its version of the FY2008 Labor, Heath, and Human Services and Education and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill. Further delay would only harm the members of the public who could benefit from the availability of this potentially life-saving information.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/18/2007 09:13:00 AM.
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.
