With the signing of the omnibus appropriations bill, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is directed to make mandatory its policy for funded investigators to submit final versions of their manuscripts to PubMed Central, the National Library of Medicine's digital archive. Previously, researchers were encouraged to make submissions to the publicly accessible database but the new provision will require all NIH grantees to deposit their research papers within 12 months after publication. The legislation comes after many years of lobbying by advocacy groups for such open access language and just as many years of opposition by publishers.
The NIH maintains a website with information and tutorials on the Manuscript Submission System and the Public Access Policy at http://www.nihms.nih.gov/
For additional information, see the news release from the Alliance for Taxpayer Access, Dec. 26, 2007