NIH Policy - Action needed

First the good news. After years of work, Open Access advocates successfully persuaded both houses of Congress to include a provision in the Labor-HHS appropriations bill that would require NIH to make federally-funded research articles publicly available on the Internet no later than 12 monts after publication.

This victory should not be underestimated because the American Association of Publishers and its allies had pulled out all the stops, making repeated office visits at which they pedaled a broad range of legal and economic arguments that were rightly rejected by members on both sides of the aisle.

Now, the not-so-good news. As was expected, and as Peter Suber reports, for unrelated reasons, President Bush has vetoed the bill.

Passage of the LHHS bill was by close to a veto-proof majority, and it is now time to urge your representatives and senators to vote to override the veto of the LHHS Appropriations measure. Contact details for members of Congress are at: http://www.congressmerge.com/onlinedb/index.htm