The National Institutes of Health is seeking public comment on its new public access mandate, according to an announcement the NIH posted Friday on their Web site. To submit your comment to the NIH click here.

Some 50 commenters will be given five minutes each to present their comments at a meeting next Thursday (March 20) in Bethesda, Md.

The NIH implemented a public access mandate in January that requires all papers arising from NIH funding to be submitted to PubMed Central within a year of publication. The mandate was part of the FY 2008 Congressional appropriations bill.

Glen Ruskin, director of legal and government affairs for the American Chemical Society (ACS), told The Scientist that the ACS is planning to attend this meeting and will submit comments before the deadline, March 17. The ACS's primary concerns regard copyright and intellectual property issues of re-entering published manuscripts into PubMed Central (you can read more about this here).

The NIH implemented the public access mandate on January 11. The same day, the ACS sent a letter to the NIH requesting that the agency receive public comments about the policy. Last month, Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter wrote NIH Director Elias Zerhouni a letter, questioning whether the NIH had adequately discussed the mandate with publishers before implementing it.

Open access advocate Peter Suber noted on his blog today that next week's meeting is a response to publisher's grievances over the mandate.