Universities, Congress push Open Access Research law

It's nice to see an honest article on this topic. I've run across more than one that has journal publishers insinuating that article authors are uncomfortable with open access, which, in my experience, is nonsense.

One paragraph is a little odd, however:

> If the bill is passed, any agency that hands out more than $100 million in grants would need to set up a method for grant recipients to send in publications in electronic form within six months of their appearing in print. That's a tighter schedule than called for by the NIH rules, which stipulate a year following publication. The submission could either be the final document sent in to the academic journal or, if the journal permits, the fully formatted version that is published online following typesetting.

That "six months" is hardly a strict requirement. It would not be at all inconvenient to have the submission required before the article appears in print; whatever got sent to the journal just gets sent to the funding agency, too.

Also, what's this about "the fully formatted version that is published online following typesetting"? Does the writer think we send in handwritten manuscripts that the journals type in and format for us? That went out 20+ years ago. Now, in math and the physical sciences, at least, submissions in LaTeX format are standard; usually, most of the "typesetting" is finished before the journal sees anything. (Possibly it's different in other disciplines, though.)