Open access lives in NIH bill

Written byBob Grant

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A provision mandating public access to research published by NIH-funded scientists has survived in the linkurl:funding bill;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/54025/ making its way through Congress this week. The provision was originally part of a funding bill that President George W. Bush linkurl:vetoed;http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/53858/ last month. It mandates that the NIH adopt a policy requiring agency-funded scientists to post their published research on the agency's publicly-accessible digital archive, linkurl:PubMed Central,;http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/ within 12 months of appearing in peer-reviewed journals. The specifics of that policy are vague in the bill and will be left to the NIH to hammer out should the law be passed. For example, it remains unclear whether the law would affect previous grantees or just current and future grantees, linkurl:Peter Suber,;http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/22214/ an open access advocate, told __The Scientist__. "It will take NIH a while to figure out which policy it wants to adopt."

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Meet the Author

Bob Grant
From 2017 to 2022, Bob Grant was Editor in Chief of The Scientist, where he started in 2007 as a Staff Writer. Before joining the team, he worked as a reporter at Audubon and earned a master’s degree in science journalism from New York University. In his previous life, he pursued a career in science, getting a bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology from Montana State University and a master’s degree in marine biology from the College of Charleston in South Carolina. Bob edited Reading Frames and other sections of the magazine.
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