july07c.indd


Andy Bridges W a s h i n g t o n  H o t l i n e  

2007 open access legislation 
In the January issue of C&RL News, this column 
covered the subject of open access to research, 
and how it was to be handled in the 110th 
Congress. Since that column, there has been 
progress in several areas of open access. 

NIH Public Access Policy 
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) 
strongly supports the goal of public access 
to research and has instituted a voluntary 
system intended to make scientifi c research 
more broadly available for use. Unfortunately, 
for a variety of reasons, that system is not 
working. 

Libraries are supporting a request by NIH 
that Congress include language in the fi scal 
year (FY) 2008 Labor/HHS appropriations bill 
to make the program mandatory. The House 
of Representatives included such language in 
last year’s appropriations bill, but due to the 
way the appropriations process concluded, 
that language did not become law. 

The House is expected to mark up the FY 
2008 Labor/HHS Appropriations Bill on June 
7. The bill will then move to the full Appro­
priations committee (tentatively scheduled for 
June 14). (The Senate Appropriations Com­
mittee­Labor/HHS Subcommittee is expected 
to review its version of appropriations bills 
later.)  

FRPAA 
In the 109th Congress, a Senate bill—the Fed­
eral Research Public Access Act of 2006 (S. 
2695)—would have required Internet access 
to articles reporting on federally funded re­
search. We expect to see the bill reintroduced 
in the Senate as well as a House version intro­
duced in the 110th Congress. Libraries strongly 
support this legislation and are continuing to 
work on its introduction and passage through 
the coalition, Alliance for Taxpayer Access. 

Andy Bridges is communications specialist at ALA’s 
Washington Offi  ce, e-mail: abridges@alawash.org 

Background 
The increased number of publishing house 
mergers in the last 20 years has been ac­
companied by a significant rise in the cost of 
scientific, technical, and medical (STM) and 
legal serial publications. Increased subscrip­
tion costs have become a crushing budgetary 
burden for many libraries and institutions. 
The most troublesome consequence to these 
economic realities is that more and more 
important scientific and technical informa­
tion is becoming less available for students 
and researchers as libraries often must forego 
expensive subscriptions. 

We are now seeing a reversal of that trend 
that may signal a revolutionary shift in the 
way that scientific information will be made 
available in the future: the introduction of new 
legislation, the recent opening of the Public 
Library of Science, and the formation of the 
Information Access Alliance. 

Every year, the federal government funds 
billions of dollars in scientific research. U.S. 
taxpayers underwrite this research and they 
have a right to expect that its dissemination 
and use will be maximized, and also that they 
themselves will have access to it. ALA is a 
member of the Open Access Working Group, 
promoting broad and rapid dissemination of 
new knowledge and unrestricted access to the 
results of scholarship and research. 

That effort was given a boost in 2004 when 
our organizations joined with others (including 
ACRL) to form the Alliance for Taxpayer Access 
(ATA, www.taxpayeraccess.org), a coalition of 
more than 60 library, nonprofit, and patient 
advocacy groups. Through ATA, we are working 
on various aspects of improving open access. 

Open access to research is one of the most 
important issues for academic and research 
librarians. Increased access to federally funded 
research accelerates the pace of discovery and 
innovation and fosters economic growth, and it 
is critical that this new research be readily avail­
able to physicians, researchers, innovators, small 
businesses, and members of the public. 

C&RL News July/August 2007  448 

http:www.taxpayeraccess.org
mailto:abridges@alawash.org