Wednesday, February 13, 2008

New NIH policy requires open access for research articles

Congress recently passed a law that requires scientists who receive funding from the National Institutes of Health to make their publications based on that research freely available to the public. The legislation was part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2008 and is a giant leap in enhancing scholarly communication. According to the NIH website, this government body invests over $28 billion a year in medical research. For more information on the new policy, see the NIH's website.

If you work with chemical formulas...

Depth-First is a great place to stay abreast of news for chemists and especially those who use and produce information in chemistry. Recently, they reported on some open source software for making chemical structures machine readable, meaning they would be electronically searchable. The key is that it's freely available to everyone. Read more...