... The ALA and ACRL have long believed that ensuring public access to the fruits of federally funded research is a logical, feasible, and widely beneficial goal. ...
All federal agencies funding significant research should adopt public access policies. This is important in a wide variety of disciplines, as new research in many fields can have an immediate impact on the public good. It is also necessary to establish consistent expectations and conditions for the management of grants and resulting output, saving institutions and principal investigators valuable time.
Based on the initial experience of low manuscript deposit rates under a voluntary NIH Public Access Policy, mandatory policies are necessary to ensure compliance and routine uptake of such submissions.
We urge a short embargo period and recommend a 6-month maximum to bring U.S. policy into alignment with policies already in place in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the European Union. ...
The authorized repository should provide support for converting the file to a standard mark-up language, such as the currently preferred XML, if the file is not submitted in that format. PDF, a document format in ubiquitous use, does not support robust searching, linking, text-mining, or reformatting over the long-term, nor does it provide full accessibility for the blind and reading impaired. ...
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.
