Yesterday the U.S. Senate passed the 2008 appropriations bill that -- if not vetoed by the President -- will be a big step forward for open access.

By a voting margin of 75 to 19 the Senate passed the 2008 appropriations bill that includes $150 billion in funding for the Departments of Health and Human Services, and Education. The bill also includes a public access mandate for all research funded by the National Institutes of Health, accounting for more than $24 billion in extramural research.

Two amendments filed last Friday (Oct 19) by Senator James Inhofe put the open access provision at risk, as I blogged on Monday. Those amendments, which would have either cut or softened the open access language from the bill, did not pass when the Senate voted last night, an Inhofe staff member told me.

"Last night's Senate action is a milestone victory for public access to taxpayer-funded research," Heather Joseph, Executive Director of SPARC, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, said in a press release issued today from the Alliance for Taxpayer Access.

President Bush has said that he will likely veto the bill because it is such a high level of spending.