Each year, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) gets over $28 billion dollars from taxpayers. The vast majority of that money goes to fund about 200,000 researchers who annually publish more than 60,000 articles. But most of those papers are off limits to the people who pay for the research—the public.

To remedy this situation, the NIH began asking researchers in 2005 to voluntarily submit their peer-reviewed manuscripts to a database called Pubmed Central. The plea fell on deaf ears. By 2006, only 4% of the articles eligible for submission had been turned in.

Now the US government is taking action. Language in the House Department of Health and Human Services appropriations bill, passed on 20 July, would require investigators to submit their papers to Pubmed Central. Those papers would be made available to the public within a year of publication. Similar language was passed in the Senate on 23 October.

The fight, however, is far from over. The provision must make it through House-Senate negotiations into a combined bill and signed into law by President Bush, who is threatening to veto.

Publishers are concerned that public access will land them in the poor house by driving away subscribers (why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?). But some scientists say that public access will speed innovation by making research readily available. Several journals are already trying the open-access model, but many require the researchers to pay for publication.

What do you think? Should I have the right to curl up with a cup of tea and a free copy of that 2006 paper on restless leg syndrome I’ve been dying to read?

Posted on behalf of Cassandra Willyard, Nature Medicine's news intern.