United States Senate
Washington, D.C. 20510

July 23, 2007

Dear Senator:

We are writing to urge the Senate to approve provisions in the FY 2008 Labor/HHS Appropriations Bill that direct the National Institutes of Health to implement a mandatory obligation to provide free public access to research articles resulting from NIH-funded research.  Specifically, the provision requires researchers to provide copies of NIH-funded research articles to the National Library of Medicine's online archive, to be made publicly available no later than 12 months after the official date of publication.

The public, including the taxpayers who pay for the research, will benefit from access to the published findings.  The expanded access will be particularly important to scientists, small business-owners, physicians and clinicians, patients, students and educators.

Some peer-reviewed medical papers are already available online and are of great benefit to doctors when informing patients of treatment options.  Such information empowers these patients, their families, and friends and enables them to make more informed decisions.  However, the vast majority of papers supported with taxpayer funding are not available to the general public, ever.

NIH's policy now calls for the voluntary deposit of articles in the online archive.  The deposit rate for individual researchers is less than five percent.  The voluntary approach has failed to protect the public’s interest in obtaining access to the research.

A mandate will ensure the public has access to all NIH-funded research.  Please support the mandate that extends to all research papers that benefited from NIH funding.

Sincerely,

Dr. Manon Ress ( This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it , 202.332.2670)
James Love ( This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it , 202.332.2670)
Knowledge Ecology International (KEI), http://www.keinonline.org

The text of the provision in HR 3043 (Making appropriations for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and related agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2008)  is as follows: