NIH Mandatory Article Deposit Signed Into Law

When H.R. 2764, the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2008, was signed into law in late December, it contained, along with billions of dollars in appropriations, direction to the National Institutes of Health to require NIH-funded researchers to deposit the final article in PubMed Central no later than 12 months after publication. There's a qualification in the wording: "Provided, That the NIH shall implement the public access policy in a manner consistent with copyright law."

In early January, organizations on both sides of the open access debate began to weigh in with public statements. For example, on the pro side is the Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resource Coalition, which has worked hard to open access to publicly funded research.

Those on the con side include STM, International Association of Scientific, Technical, and Medical Publishers and the Association of American Publishers.

How that "Provided" statement is interpreted is apparently open to interpretation. Back in July 2007, for instance, SPARC released a document asserting that NIH's policy "does not violate copyright obligations." But Allan Adler of AAP and Michael Mabe of STM say differently, as noted in the Library Journal Academic Newswire story of January 8.

Is this the end of the story? Not according to AAP, which has pledged to pursue the issue with Congress to address the policy's "negative impact on science publishing and the protection of related intellectual property rights."

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