The US National Institutes of Health Public Access Policy has long been controversial. The policy requires NIH grant-holders to deposit manuscripts in PubMed Central no later than a year after the version of record is published.

Soon to come after the Directory of Open Access Journals, and the Directory of Open Access Repositories is the Directory of Open Access Books. The beta version of the service will be made public in early (northern hemisphere) spring this year.

Elsevier has announced that it has withdrawn its support for the US Research Works Act (HR 3699). In their announcement they explain: We are ready and willing to work constructively and cooperatively to continue to promote free and low-cost public access through a variety of means, as we have with research funders and other partners around the world.

You may read Elsevier's announcement: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/intro.cws_home/newmessagerwa

Professor Warwick Anderson, CEO of the NHMRC, recently announced that deposit of all council-funded research in an open source repository will be required within 12 months of publication. The policy will come into effect from 1 July 2012. More details of the policy change are available from http://www.nhmrc.gov.au/media/notices/2012/revised-policy-dissemination-research-findings

Protests against the US Research Works Act are escalating. You can sign a petition to register your opposition. The petition will be delivered to the US House of Representatives.

Though American signatories will obviously carry more weight, a display of worldwide opposition to the bill cannot hurt.

The US Research Works Act would allow publishers to line their pockets by locking publicly funded research behind paywalls, according to a Comment piece, Academic publishers have become the enemies of science, in today's Guardian.

Since 2009, publicly funded medical research outputs have been made available free of charge by the National Library of Medicine through PubMed Central. This has provided taxpayers with access to the medical breakthroughs their tax dollars pay for.

Open access should get a considerable boost from a new UK Government policy statement issued by the department responsible for innovation.

The statement, Innovation and Research Strategy for Growth, states:

The Council of Australian University Librarians has an Open Scholarship initiative (COSI for short).

Does open science make a difference? How do working methods change? What are the barriers to openness?