For Immediate Release

Background: Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) and Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) today introduced (or announced) legislation that would give taxpayers access to billions of dollars of research for which they have already paid. The bill would expand the limited, voluntary program at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) which simply requests that researchers doing work funded by taxpayers post their work online. The bill would strengthen and expand the policy pioneered by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to provide free online access to publicly-funded research. The NIH asks its grantees to agree to free online access, but the new Cornyn-Lieberman bill would require it and extend the policy beyond the NIH to other federal funding agencies.

Title: A bill to amend the Public Health Service Act to establish the American Center for Cures to accelerate the development of public and private research efforts towards tools and therapies for human diseases with the goal of early disease detection, prevention, and cure, and for other purposes.

• The text of this bill is available on Thomas.

In this issue: Victory in the Broadcast Flag Case; Celebrity Sparks PK Membership Drive; President Signs Family Movie legislation; Open Access Era Begins at NIH; and Consumer Groups Support Boucher-Doolittle-Barton Bill.

For Immediate Release

Background: Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael Leavitt today announced his department's policy on open-access publishing of government-funded research. The policy requests the authors of scientific papers to make their work available for free, online as soon as possible and within 12 months of the official date of publication.

Statement of Peter Suber, director of Public Knowledge's Open Access Project:

In this issue: Message from Gigi; Happy New Year. It’s Copyright Time Already; Open Access Project Victory Stalled; WIPO Broadcast Treaty Likely to be Approved; and The Broadcast Flag Challenge Is Flying High.