NIH Open Access mandate is law

Via Peter Suber, President Bush signed the omnibus spending bill that includes the requirement that publications based on NIH-funded research be submitted to PubMed Central and made publicly available, with a no more than 12-month embargo.

That said, there is no reason to wait to start depositing, articles should be deposited upon publication with restricted access for one year rather than waiting for deposit (Who keeps track of embargoes? -- "Today it's been a year and I should deposit that article"), and the same articles should additionally be self-archived in each researcher's university's own Institutional Repository. If their institution does not have an IR, they should ask "Why Not?"

EDIT at 6:27 PM: Here's the press release from the Alliance for Taxpayer Access.