July 21, 2009. KEI letter to Senators John Cornyn and Joseph Lieberman co-signed by IP Justice (IPJ), Essential Action, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM) and OXFAM America to express their appreciation for sponsoring the 2009 Federal Research Public Access Act (S.1373).
This legislation would extend, improve and make more permanent an earlier open access initiative involving NIH funded research.
The new legislation would require that any federal agency with a budget or $100,000 or more for extramural research develop a policy on public access to publicly funded research. Among other things, the legislation would require government funded research papers to be made available in publicly accessible Internet archives within 6 months of publication in a peer reviewed journal, and would ensure the long-term preservation of, and free public access to, the published research finding in a stable digital repository.
More information at the Alliance for Taxpayer Access