From Library Journal:
Public access to research just got a big legislative boost. With passage late Tuesday of the 2009 Consolidated Appropriations Act, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Public Access Policy mandate, enacted last April as part of the 2008 appropriations act, has become permanent.
As first reported in Tuesday’s LJ Academic Newswire, the mandate, which requires that NIH grantees make research articles funded by the agency publicly available and searchable online via PubMed Central within 12 months after publication in a journal, was subject to annual renewal. However, a clause in this year’s bill requires the NIH director to enforce the policy “in the current fiscal year and thereafter.”