Mandate for public access to NIH-funded research

The Alliance for Taxpayer Access announced today that passage of S. 1710 - the 2008 Labor, HHS, and Education Appropriations Bill. The bill includes a requirement that NIH-funded research be freely available to the public, and amendments 3416 & 3417 - which would have made this voluntary rather than required - were not brought up for consideration. NIH-funded researchers will be required to deposit copies of eligible manuscripts into the National Library of Medicine's online database, PubMed. Articles will be made publicly available no later than a year after publication in a peer-reviewed journal.
For any of you active in the ALA (especially the Government Documents section) or the ARL, you probably know that there was concern that the public access to these documents would be limited by amendments to Appropriations Bill, and the passage of the Bill is cause for rejoicing.