Chemistry Central Blog
Consolidated Appropriations Act 2008: positive for open access, disappointing for chemistry?
Many of you will by now be aware that in December
the Consolidated Appropriations Act 2008 was signed into US law by President
Bush. This means that the National Institutes of Health's (NIH)
Public Access Policy, which was previously voluntary, is set to become
mandatory, marking a pleasing development for proponents of Open Access. BioMed
Central's Publisher, Matt Cockerill, has already outlined what the policy
means on the BMC blog.
While this is important news to us at Chemistry Central, it is also worth
remembering that this is only a very small part of huge bill, which sets out
federal research and development funding budgets for the coming year.
Overall, total federal investment in research and development is to increase by
1.3% to $142.7 billion. In particular, the NIH's total budget for 2008 will
stand at $29.5 billion (97% of which is R&D spending), a mere increase of
0.9% ($275 million) on last year, and $776 million less than laid out in
November's vetoed appropriation. If enacted, the increase will mark the
fifth consecutive year in which NIH funding has not risen in tune with
'biomedical inflation' (see table A here), which has been
estimated at 3.7%.
Much of the NIH increase is earmarked for the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS,
Tuberculosis, and Malaria, and the NIH Common Fund, meaning that the budgets of
all NIH institutes and centres will remain essentially flat in 2008 (increasing
by around 0.1%), thus also falling well short of THE economy-wide inflationary
increase, which is projected at 2.4%.
What does this mean, specifically, for chemical research?
The research and development budget announcement is a cause for some
concern amongst researchers, a sentiment that has been voiced elsewhere,
notably in relation the potential effects on chemical industry if cuts were made at
the Department of Energy (DOE). In addition
to the NIH, there are numerous other bodies whose budgetary increases are of
particular interest to chemists. Under the appropriation, the National Science
Foundation's research and development investments are to increase to $4.5
billion, marking a 1.1% rise, meaning that in real terms funding will remain below
that of last year. The Environmental Protection Agency, much of
whose research is chemistry-related, will see its Science and Technology
account budget increase by 3.3% to around $760 million; while the Office of
Science, through which much of the DOE's chemistry funding comes, will see an increase of only 5.8% (3.5% in real terms).
A comprehensive summary of all appropriations for R&D and public health
programs can be found here.
Posted by Gino D'Oca at 17:03 Comments (0)
