NIH OA Mandate Passes

One of the major victories in the open access (OA) movement was ushered in quietly during what is typically known as vacation week in Washington, D.C. On Dec. 26, President George W. Bush signed the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2007, a $555 billion spending bill that weaved its way around the

House of Representatives, the Senate, the White House, and then back again since July. In one final dash of the presidential pen, it was done, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) had a mandate to make all of its funded research OA. This requirement represents a historic first for a U.S. government agency and one of the largest single mandates worldwide.

The Public Access Policy, which was initially implemented as a weak voluntary measure in 2005, will now require a researcher (or an OA publisher) to directly deposit digital copies of peer-reviewed articles into the National Library of Medicine at PubMed Central upon acceptance and to publish them online no later than 12 months after publication. The OA community would have preferred a requirement of 6 months after publication, but its members still cheered. No doubt, some New Year's Eve champagne was opened a bit before its time.