NIH Public Access Policy Details

Prior Health Sciences Library
NIH Public Access Policy Details

In December, 2007 President Bush signed into law a bill requiring the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to mandate public access to the results of NIH funded research.  On January 11, 2008, the NIH announced a revision to its Public Access Policy. The Policy, part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2008, now requires eligible researchers to deposit final, peer-reviewed articles into NIH's PubMed Central (PMC) secure digital repository so that they may be made publicly available within 12 months of publication.   At this time, the policy applies only to NIH-funded research, not to research supported by other funding agencies.

The new NIH Public Access Policy will ensure that NIH-funded research is accessible to the public, health care providers, educators and scientists and is designed to help advance science and improve human health.  PMC is the NIH digital archive of full text biomedical and life sciences journal literature.  Journals included in PMC benefit from the integration of its full text with PubMed (MEDLINE) and numerous other databases in NCBI's Entrez system, and the increased exposure that this brings.

The Policy applies to you if your peer-reviewed article is:

• Directly funded by an NIH grant or cooperative agreement active in Fiscal Year 2008 (October 1, 2007- September 30, 2008) or beyond
• Directly funded by a contract signed on or after April 7, 2008

Important Dates

• As of April 7, 2008, all articles arising from NIH funds must be submitted to PMC upon acceptance for publication.
• As of May 25, 2008, NIH applications, proposals, and progress reports must include the PMC reference number (PMCID) when citing an article that falls under the policy and is authored or co-authored by the investigator, or arose from the investigator’s NIH award. This policy includes applications submitted to the NIH for the May 25, 2008 due date and subsequent due dates.

Policy Specifics:

·         The Policy applies to authors of all peer-reviewed journal articles, including research reports and reviews.  The Policy does not apply to authors of letters, book chapters, editorials, etc. 

·         Principle Investigators (PI) and their institutions are responsible for ensuring all terms of the Policy are met. This requirement stands even if the PI is not the author or co-author of the peer-reviewed publication.

·         The Policy applies in each of these points, regardless of a source or amount of additional (non-NIH) funding received by the author.

·         Non-compliance will be addressed administratively and may delay or prevent awarding of funds.

·         An article need only be submitted once to PMC.  If an article has multiple authors, any of the authors may submit the article.  Authors will be notified during the submission process if they try to submit an article that has already been submitted. 

·         The article should be complete with illustrations/tables and other materials that will appear in the final form.

Actions grantees must take:

1. Address copyright:Authors of articles arising from NIH funds are responsible for ensuring that publishing agreements allow for full compliance with the Policy.   Authors must exercise care when they are presented with agreements by the journal that is to publish their article as changes to the agreement may be necessary.  Under this mandate, publishers must allow the accepted peer-reviewed manuscript to be deposited in PMC as soon as possible but no later than 12 months after journal publication.

Many institutions in the CIC (Big 10 Consortia) have agreed upon common author rights terms.  This author rights documentation is still under consideration at OSU.  Until the CIC author addendum is available for your use, add the following language to the publication agreement: "Journal acknowledges that Author retains the right to provide a copy of the final manuscript to the NIH upon acceptance for Journal publication, for public archiving in PubMed Central as soon as possible but no later than 12 months after publication by Journal."

For assistance with these author rights, see the OSU Libraries' Rights Management Department

1. Submit the article to NIH.NIH has worked with publishers to develop several ways to submit articles:

·         The author, or someone designated by the author, may deposit a copy of the peer-reviewed manuscript in the NIH Manuscript Submission system (NIHMS).  

·         The journal publisher may offer to send the peer-reviewed manuscript files to the NIHMS system for you.  Some publishers may charge a fee to do this for you.  You can avoid the fee by submitting the article yourself. 

·         Publish in a PubMed Central Journal. These publishers have agreed to support the PMC repository.  An exception to this is when a publisher submits the article to PMC but does not meet the 12 month deadline or does not submit the correct manuscript format.  Authors should be aware of these details.  A list of these journals is available.

Submitting an article to PubMed Central typically takes less than 15 minutes using the NIHMS.  There is an online tutorial for using NIHMS .

No matter how the paper is submitted, the author will need to verify and approve the manuscript personally via the NIHMS system. Authors will receive an email message requesting the author to review the PMC-formatted article for approval. 

3. Cite Article. 

When your article is submitted to the NIHMS, you will be given a NIHMS ID number.  Once the article is available in PubMed Central, it will be given a PMC ID number. 

As of May 25, 2008, authors must include PubMed Central ID numbers (PMCID) in NIH applications, proposals, and reports when citing their articles (or those that arose from their NIH award) covered by the policy.   If a PMCID is not yet available, include the NIHMS submission ID instead. 

Citation format example:

Varmus H. 2003. Public Health: Grand Challenges in Global Health. Science 302(5644):398-399. PMCID: 243493.

For assistance with citations in applications or reports, please contact your Research Foundation Program Officer or Project Manager.

For additional information on this Policy and other scientific publishing issues, please see the Prior Library site, Current Issues in Scientific Publishing.