S. 2104 mandates open access for publicly funded research paper, this could be great news!

Thanks to John T. Mitchell (Interaction Law) for pointing to this recently proposed bill. This is big. It mandates open access!

According to the Bill, final manuscript resulting from publicly funded research should be made publicly available on the Internet through PubMed Central not later than 6 months after the date of publication of the manuscript. Failure to submit to the National Library of Medicine within 6 months may result in the loss of public funding for the investigators involved.

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/D?d109:23:./temp/~bddrq0:@@@P

S.2104
Title: A bill to amend the Public Health Service Act to establish the American Center for Cures to accelerate the development of public and private research efforts towards tools and therapies for human diseases with the goal of early disease detection, prevention, and cure, and for other purposes.
Sponsor: Sen Lieberman, Joseph I. [CT] (introduced 12/14/2005) Cosponsors (3)
Latest Major Action: 12/14/2005 Referred to Senate committee. Status: Read twice and referred to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.
COSPONSORS(3), ALPHABETICAL
Sen Carper, Thomas R. [DE] - 12/14/2005
Sen Cochran, Thad [MS] - 12/14/2005
Sen Hutchison, Kay Bailey [TX] - 12/14/2005

“SEC. 499H-1. PUBLIC ACCESS REQUIREMENT FOR RESEARCH.

“(a) In General.—The Secretary shall require all funded investigators, whether direct employees of the Department of Health and Human Services or recipients of grants, contracts, or other support of the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, to submit to the National Library of Medicine of the National Institutes of Health (referred to in this section as the ‘National Library of Medicine’), upon acceptance for publication in a journal or other publication included in the PubMed directory, final manuscripts resulting from research in which direct costs are supported in whole or in part by the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

“(b) Public Availability.—

“(1) IN GENERAL.—The National Library of Medicine shall include all such manuscripts described in subsection (a), after peer review, for display in the National Library of Medicine’s digital library archive, PubMed Central. The copyright holder of a manuscript described in subsection (a) may request the author’s manuscript be replaced with final published text.

“(2) TIMELINE.—A manuscript described in subsection (a) shall become publicly available on the Internet through PubMed Central not later than 6 months after the date of publication of the manuscript.

“(3) LOSS OF FUNDING FOR FAILURE TO SUBMIT ON TIME.—Failure to submit required information under this section to the National Library of Medicine within 6 months of the date of publication of the manuscript involved shall be considered by the Secretary in the context of grant compliance review and may result in the loss of public funding for the investigators involved as determined appropriate by the agency involved.

More on Open Access on Peter Suber's site:
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_12_04_fosblogarchive.html