Librarians Finally Get Their Way: Free Public Access to Federally Funded Health Research Research

On February 3, 2005, the National Institute of Health issued a press release regarding free public access to the published results of research funded by NIH. Manuscripts are to be posted to PubMed within twelve months. With the increasingly high cost of scientific journals, there has been an ongoing debate in the scientific community about public access to taxpayer-funded research. Librarians were active in promoting public access. Here's some background information from the American Library Association.

Here's what the NIH says about it's new policy:

• "The NIH policy will achieve several important goals,
  including:
  
  (1) creating a stable archive of peer-reviewed research
  publications resulting from NIH-funded studies to ensure
  the permanent preservation of these vital research
  findings;
  
  (2) securing a searchable compendium of these research
  publications that NIH and its awardees can use to manage
  more efficiently and to understand better their research
  portfolios, monitor scientific productivity, and,
  ultimately, help set research priorities; and
  
  (3) making published results of NIH-funded research more
  readily accessible to the public, health care providers,
  educators, and scientists."

This is a major victory for public access to information the public has paid for. Now, we have to get to work on the Congressional Research Service.