Open Access to Research

Open access to research is one of the most important issues for academic libraries and strongly supported by the Association of College and Research Libraries. Increased access to federally funded research accelerates the pace of discovery and innovation.It is critical that this new research be readily available to researchers and all taxpayers.

In May last year, Senator Lieberman and Senator Cornyn (R-TX) introduced the "Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006." (FRPAA) The bill, S.2695, would have required federal agencies that fund more than $100 million in annual external research to make electronic manuscripts of peer-reviewed journal articles stemming from their research publicly available via the Internet within six months of publication. It is anticipated that FRPAA will be reintroduced early by the 110th Congress in the Senate and in the House of Representatives.

For further information, please go to the Alliance for Taxpayer Access (www.taxpayeraccess.org/frpaa/), a coalition that supports reforms that will make publicly funded research accessible to the public. You might also send a message to Senator Lieberman.