Departments of Labor , Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2008--Continued

Floor Speech

DEPARTMENTS OF LABOR, HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, AND EDUCATION APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2008--Continued -- (Senate - October 23, 2007)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. INHOFE. I would like to add my voice to Senator Enzi's concern regarding the NIH public access mandate that would force private sector publishers to make their articles freely available on an NIH Web site. I am concerned that this proposal will harm the journal businesses, hurt scientific communication, and impose a severe regulatory taking on commercial and nonprofit publishers. I also believe that this change in policy could have a negative impact on the intellectual property protections for scientific journal articles. I believe this issue is different from making underlying scientific data available. I believe that federally funded scientific raw data should be available for other researchers to review. I would also ask that Senators Harkin and Specter agree to work with me to revise this NIH provision when this bill is conferenced.

Mr. HARKIN. I remain committed to retaining the provision in conference as it is written in the Senate and House Labor-HHS appropriations bills. I will be happy to work with the Senators from Wyoming and Oklahoma to ensure that the policy is implemented as smoothly as possible for the NIH, researchers, and scientific publishers.

Mr. SPECTER. I thank the Senators from Wyoming and Oklahoma for their concerns about the NIH public access policy, which I share. I will work with the chairman to closely monitor the policy's implementation.

Mr. ENZI. I thank the distinguished chairman and ranking member of the subcommittee.

Mr. INHOFE. I also thank the distinguished chairman and ranking member of the subcommittee for their willingness to work with Senator Enzi and me on this important issue.

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