On June 25, Senators John Cornyn and Joe Lieberman re-introduced the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA, S.1373) in the Senate.

This is an important development. FRPAA would essentially extend the NIH open-access policy across the federal government. Most federally-funded researchers would be required to deposit their peer reviewed manuscripts in a suitable open access repository at the time of acceptance for publication, and the repositories would be required to release the open access copies no later than six months after publication.

Currently, the NIH and the Institute of Education Sciences (within the Dept of Ed) are the only federal agencies with similar policies, and both of them allow 12 month delays, not just the FRPAA six month delay. FRPAA would apply to all unclassified research funded in whole or part by agencies whose budgets for extramural research are $100 million/year or greater.

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