The day after Christmas, President Bush signed into law the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2007 (H.R. 2764), part of which contained a mandate for all research funded by the National Institutes of Health to be made publicly accessible within a year of publication in the National Library of Medicine’s online archive, PubMed Central. This is huge news for many reasons, as SPARC’s Peter Suber notes, in particular because

The NIH is the world’s largest funder of scientific research (not counting classified military research). Its budget last year, $28 billion, was larger than the gross domestic product of 142 nations. As my colleague Ray English points out, it’s more than five times larger than all seven of the Research Councils UK combined. NIH-funded research results in 65,000 peer-reviewed articles every year or 178 every day. … Its OA mandate will not only free up an unprecedented quantity of high-quality medical research. It will also make a giant step toward cultivating new expectations –among researchers, funders, governments, and voters– that publicly-funded research should be OA.

Around the same time, the European Research Council also released its guidelines for open access, which affirm academia’s principles of sharing knowledge as widely as possible and make open access mandatory for all ERC-funded research.

Of course, there’s still work to be done. The federal government funds plenty of research through agencies other than the NIH, not to mention research not funded by the government at all. The yearlong embargo in getting the latest medical research is also less than ideal. But this is still a great step forward, one which will hopefully encourage other agencies and individual academics to release their research freely.

Students for Free Culture is proud to have participated, along with many of its member chapters and other organizations, in last February’s National Open Access Day of Action to raise awareness of access to research issues among students and pressure congresspeople to support HR 2764.

Read Students for Free Culture board member Gavin Baker’s analysis of the bill’s passage and the NIH’s subsequent policy changes.

Also, the winner of SPARC’s viral video contest, of which I was a judge, was announced at last weekend’s American Library Association Midwinter Meeting. Check it out:

July 20th, 2007, the US House of Representatives approved a measure directing the National Institute of Health (NIH) to require free, online access to agency-funded research within 12 months of publishing in a peer-reviewed journal. Open Access advocates praised the provision, passed with broad, bipartisan support as part of the FY2008 Labor, HHS, and Education Appropriations Bill. “This action paves the way for all scientists and citizens to access, use, and benefit from the results of publicly funded biomedical research,” said Heather Joseph, Executive Director of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, and a leader of the Alliance for Taxpayer Access. 26 Nobel Laureates called for mandatory public access to NIH research in a recent letter to congress, citing the Human Genome Project and benefits of public access to research. Less than 5% of eligible, individual research has become publicly accessible under the current, voluntary NIH Public Access Policy.

We are a member of the Alliance for Taxpayer Access, and this is something we’ve been working towards for a long time! You may recall our national day of action for open access, when we tabled and held other events on campuses across the country in support of a similar bill. It’s very gratifying to see this pass the House, and we can only hope that with your help we can make sure this gets through the Senate when that comes to a vote as well.

Last week, our pals at the EFF released the Bloggers’ FAQ on the Freedom of Information Act. The document is the latest addition to the EFF’s series of legal guides for bloggers. From the announcement:

“Online journalism makes a unique contribution to America’s vibrant culture of free speech,” said EFF Staff Attorney Marcia Hofmann. “Using the Freedom of Information Act is a powerful way to shed light on government activities and foster critical public debate about the discoveries.”

FreeCulture.org supports citizen journalism as part of a free and vibrant media landscape. We believe that all people have the right to open government.

Last March, we organized Blogshine Sunday to highlight bloggers’ experiences gaining access to government information. Efforts like the EFF’s guide will place bloggers and independent journalists on even better footing to hold governments accountable.