This report begins with an inventory of basic information: definitions and guides to histories of the growth of open access publishing and citation archives and descriptions of selected major open access activities. It moves on to summarize major points of difference between proponents and opponents of nongovernmental open access publishing and databases, and then highlights federal, including National Institutes of Health (NIH), open access activities and contentious issues surrounding these developments. The report also briefly describes open access developments in the United Kingdom (where a number of governmental and nongovernmental initiatives have occurred) and in the international arena. Finally, controversial issues which could receive attention the 110 th Congress are summarized. The "open access movement" is said to have begun in 1966. The term describes a variety of activities that includes access to archives of indexed citations of articles, access to separate journal articles that were published in traditional, subscriber-pays journals, and access to free, online journals. According to a May 23, 2005 Wall Street Journal article,"[c]urrently, the open-access movement makes up between 1% and 2% of the market, experts say. While that number seems small, the concept is assuming an important role channeling academic discontent" about the rising costs of journals. In traditional, subscriber-pays publishing , the publisher, who holds the copyright to an article, pays most printing and distribution costs and, in order to read an article, the journal subscriber pays fees, whether for hard-copy or online versions. Sometimes an author is required to pay printing page charges for complex graphics or color presentations. " Open access " publishing generally means that the author or publisher, who holds the copyright to an article, grants all users unlimited, free access to, and license to copy and distribute, a work published in an open access journal (which may be published initially electronically or in hard-copy). Users can also make copies for their personal use, if authorship is properly attributed. Open access publishing often requires an author to pay for publishing or posting of a paper. Estimates of fees charged vary, but generally range from about $500 to $4,000. These charges may be paid by individual authors, or by institutions, pursuant to institutional subscription contracts with open access journals that cover publication charges for all authors affiliated with that institution. Typically, open access publishers require that a complete version of the work and related materials be deposited electronically in an online database that permits open access, distribution, interoperability (allowing users to extract and use the data in other research), and long-term archiving. In " free access " publishing neither an author nor a reader pays for articles to be published or posted on the Internet, but other open access features may not be mandatory. A few commercial publishers have adopted some open access features in their business models. However, the fundamental difference is that traditional publishers generally require readers to pay to read or print an article, or to search indexes of abstracts or citations. Open access publishers generally do not require readers to pay for these services. Some traditional publishers say they already provide open access in that they may make papers freely available online—but this is usually a year or two after publication. The publishers still hold copyright, and they may or may not allow the author to post his or her published articles in an open access repository or database, or on the author's own website. The scope of open access repositories or archives varies. Some contain published journal articles or nonpublished "grey literature" in all fields of science or in specific scientific disciplines. Some archive a specific researchers' preprints, articles, or research reports; or, as in the case of the National Institutes of Health model, articles, data, or other materials funded by an agency, but prepared for publication by traditional publishers. Some open access repositories archive only citations for articles or other materials; some archive both citations and full text materials; some allow free downloading and some do not. A variety of nongovernmental open access publishing activities is illustrated next with summaries of some current major open access information systems or publishers. These are categorized by general type, including commercial open access systems, academic-sponsored systems, and subject or disciplinary systems. NIH's PubMed Central (PMC) system is described in detail in the section of this report that focuses on NIH. PLoS is a nonprofit group, spearheaded in large part by Dr. Harold Varmus, former NIH director. It provides readers with free access to peer reviewed articles published in PLoS's electronic journals. The activity is supported by author payments starting at $1,500 per article and multi-million dollar philanthropic foundation contributions. PLoS's journals include PLoS Biology, PLoS Medicine, PLoS Computational Biology, PLoS Genetics, and PLoS Pathogens. PLoS seeks to launch journals in other disciplines. It has the goal of publishing highly selective, top-quality articles competitive with the quality of articles in traditional, subscriber-pays journals like Science and Nature. Different from traditional, subscriber-pays publishing, which requires authors to cede copyright to the publisher, authors who publish in PLoS retain copyright to an article, but are required to deposit a copy of the article in an open access, online repository that allows long-term archiving. Reportedly, one of the group's major goals is to make research more accessible by eliminating publishers as copyright holders and by ending the "balkanization" of scientific information in separate databases. Under PLoS's editorial policy, "any data can be integrated into new work as long as the original author is credited appropriately. The model is inspired by GenBank, the central repository of DNA sequence whose open access policy has driven much of the progress in genomics and biotechnology of the last decade." PLoS has announced that it will assist scientists in developing countries by providing Internet access for readers of limited bandwidth, and will waive or defray author charges for those who cannot afford to pay. This is a British-founded, independent, commercial publishing system, which provides free access to peer reviewed biomedical research published online. It publishes its own approximately 120 biomedical journals and says articles are rapidly peer reviewed; peer review policies are determined by each journal's board. Authors retain copyright of their work. BioMedCentral charges authors or their institutions for the costs of peer review and publication. "Other sources of revenue include subscription access to commissioned articles, sales of paper copies of our journals to libraries, sales of reprints, advertising and sponsorship, and ... a range of subscription-based value added services such as literature reviews and evaluation, personalized information services delivered electronically, provision of editorially enhanced databases, tools that help scientists collaborate, and other software research aids." It archives materials in PubMed Central, NIH's free archive of biomedical literature. BioMedCentral has created a fee-based subscription service called Faculty of 1000. It originated because the publication of so many articles in online journals (sometimes free to readers) with varying degrees of peer review has spawned a new industry: peer reviewers or experts who evaluate articles after publication and provide a selected list of articles recommended for reading to their paid subscribers. In spring 2005 patientINFORM was launched by the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association, and the American Diabetes Association, in partnership with more than 20 publishing firms, to provide immediate access to free, selected full-text research articles and materials from the three organizations' websites, which provide links to different types of published materials. "According to the group, the initiative 'is being driven by recent trends indicating that public awareness of clinical research, heightened by media coverage and fueled by the spread of broadband Internet, has led more and more patients to go online to find the latest information about treatment options.'" NIH's decision to launch its system, reportedly, accelerated the formation of patientINFORM . After a period of evaluation, "... the group will determine whether to expand its focus past the three initial diseases into rarer conditions." This system may not permit permanent access to materials on it, since the organizations maintaining the website may, overtime, replace or remove materials posted. Some universities ensure that their scholars' publications are available online in a free open access repository by creating their own archives or participating in networked open access archives. Several examples are outlined next. The EScholarship Program of the University of California system was launched in the fall of 2003. It is an electronic, searchable repository that makes freely available an archive of the publications (and other media) and some research databases of University of California researchers. The vehicle is also used to disseminate the university's own open access, peer reviewed published journals. Supporters of systems like this say that indexing materials improves access to them and, if full text is available, widens reader access, and improves utilization of federally financed research and development. A number of research universities are participating in DSpace , a networked multi-member electronic repository that indexes and shares some research data, articles, and other media. It was developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in collaboration with Hewlett-Packard. Some universities, such as Cornell, reportedly, are using it to provide free access to peer reviewed publications. This is an archive run by Stanford University that provides online, full-text articles for biomedical and other scientific journals. It adheres to the post-publication timing policies of each journal, with most articles archived and made accessible between 6 and 24 months after publication in the original traditional, subscriber-pays published journal. Some of these articles, but not all, may be viewed for free. Some repositories permit free searching for citations, abstracts, articles, or other materials in specific disciplinary fields or areas of application, or by researchers affiliated with specific academic systems, or by other researchers. A few illustrations are given next. Initiated in 1991, this is a free, online archive which allows physical science researchers to make preprints of their papers available before formal publication.