CURES Act Would Push NIH

-- Library Journal, 01/11/2006

The battle for free public access to government-funded research may heat up after Sens. Joe Lieberman (D-CT) and Thad Cochran (R-MS) introduced legislation to establish the American Center for Cures within the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Included in that bill, known as the CURES act, is an aggressive provision to help make taxpayer-funded biomedical research available to all potential users.

Although Congress directed the NIH to draft a policy to achieve that goal in 2005, what resulted was a weak policy that simply requested NIH-funded research be deposited into PubMed Central within a year after publication. A provision of the CURES Act, however, if passed, would require research funded by a number of government agencies be made available within six months. In addition, the law would set penalties for non-compliance. SPARC director Heather Joseph said that library groups were "gratified" to see that Congress took universal access to research into account.