[Scholarly Communication] 

On May 2nd, Senators John Cornyn (R-TX) and Joe Lieberman (D-CT) introduced the Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006 (FRPAA) in the US Senate (full text of the bill; FAQ from Cornyn's office). The bill requires every federal agency with an annual research budget of more than $100 million -- including NASA, the EPA, NSF, and the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, and Transportation -- to implement a policy for public access to research results and provide such access no more than 6 months after publication.

The bill strengthens a one-year-old NIH policy that asks researchers to submit accepted papers to NIH for posting in PubMed Central, NIH's full-text archive, within 12 months of publication in a journal. However, that request has been ignored by most NIH grantees: A January report by NIH noted that fewer than 4% are complying. An NIH advisory committee has recommended that the policy be mandatory and that the 12-month limit be reduced to 6 months for most journals. This bill would require NIH to make those changes.

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