The US Senate has now passed the ">NIH Green OA Mandate by a big majority. There is now no need for US Universities to keep waiting (to see whether it is implemented, or vetoed by President Bush). Knowing they have the blessing of both Houses of Congress, universities can already go ahead and adopt Green OA Mandates their own institutional research output to be deposited in their own Institutional Repositories -- and not just the NIH-funded biomedical research, but all their research output (along the lines of the US Federal Research Public Access Act [FRPAA], which is also soon to be revived). Research funders (including the NIH!) can go ahead with their mandates too. The handwriting is on the wall, and it is Green. Meanwhile, daily, weekly, monthly research access and impact are still being lost, needlessly, and cumulatively, at the expense of research productivity and progress for us all.
Comments
Stevan is right. Even if Bush vetoes the Senate bill and all our post-veto strategies fail, universities can still assure OA to the NIH-funded research by their own faculty. Universities never needed a green light from Congress to do this. But if they were waiting, they have it now. Moreover, universities can assure OA to all the research by their own faculty, NIH-funded or not, and always could.
But for the record: Our post-veto strategies will not fail. Stay tuned.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/25/2007 11:20:00 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.
