Bill in Senate to Expand Public Access to Taxpayer-funded Research

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the world’s largest source of funding for biomedical research. Taxpayers provide more than $28 billion annually for the NIH [1], yet only about a third of the research studies are made publicly available in various repositories after a 12-month delay [2]. Lawmakers are trying to change this and the U.S. Senate is currently deliberating a bill that would require all research funded by the NIH to be freely available to the public within 12 months of publication.