Letter to House and Senate Appropriations Committee members on National Institutes of Health (NIH) public access policy

June 19, 2007
 

Appropriations Committee

The U.S. Senate

Appropriations Committee

The U.S. House of Representatives

Dear Senators and Representatives,
 
As an organization that includes more than 600 advocacy, research, and healthcare organizations that represent the interests of millions of individuals living with genetic conditions, we are writing to ask for your support in ensuring that U.S. taxpayers have timely and free access to articles reporting on government-funded research. 
 
Specifically, as your committee prepares to mark up the Fiscal Year 2008 Appropriations bill, we ask that you include bill language directing the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to implement a public access policy that will require all NIH-funded researchers to deposit an electronic copy of their final, peer-reviewed manuscript to PubMed Central upon the article's acceptance for publication.   Furthermore, we support requirements to make manuscripts publicly accessible as soon as possible and no later than within 12 months of their publication.  Without firm direction to NIH, the public access policy will not achieve its intended results, to the detriment of biomedical research at home and abroad.
 
The actions taken by you and your committee on this issue will be more critical than ever before.  We respectfully urge that you take appropriate actions to ensure the NIH policy attains its intended results and is regarded as a model public access policy by the greater research and scientific community.
 
Sincerely,
 
Sharon F. Terry, MA