President Obama has signed into law the 2009 Consolidated Appropriations Act, which includes a provision making the National Institututes of Health (NIH) Public Access Policy permanent. The NIH Revised Policy on Enhancing Public Access requires eligible NIH-funded researchers to deposit electronic copies of their peer-reviewed manuscripts into the National Library of Medicine's online archive, PubMed Central (PMC).
The NIH policy had been implemented with a provision that was subject to annual renewal. As a result of the revised policy, the percentage of eligible manuscripts deposited into PMC has increased significantly, with over 3,000 new manuscripts being deposited each month. The PMC database is a part of a valuable set of public database resources at the NIH, which are accessed by more than 2 million users each day.
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In January 2009, several organizations, including SLA, submitted a public access statement to the Obama Transition Team.
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In September 2008, SLA and others sent letters in strong support of the NIH Public Access policy.
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