Director’s Reflections . . . NIH Public Access Mandate: Dates to Remember and Helpful Web Sites

color-picture_be-caption-smaller.jpgNIH investigators should be aware of two important dates related to the new NIH Public Access Policy. This legislation requires that all journal articles reporting on NIH-funded research be deposited into the National Library of Medicine’s online archive, PubMed Central. These two dates are April 7, 2008 and May 25, 2008.

Beginning on April 7, all applicable peer-reviewed articles accepted for publication must be in compliance with this mandate. To comply authors must:

  • inform the journal that the article is subject to the Policy when submitting for publication.
  • make sure that any copyright transfer or other publication agreement has appropriate language, allowing the article to be submitted to NIH, in accordance with the Policy.
  • must take responsibility for submitting the article to PubMed Central on acceptance, unless the journal has explicitly agreed to do this on the author’s behalf.

Beginning on May 25, relevant citations included in NIH applications, proposals and progress reports must include the PubMed Central reference number (PMCID). Citations that fall under this policy are those that are authored or co-authored by the investigator, or that arose from the investigator’s NIH award.

Helpful Web Sites

  • HSLS NIH Public Access Policy includes detailed instructions and citation examples, as well as quick links to the NIH Manuscript Submission site, and NIH’s informative “Frequently Asked Questions” page. You can also link to a listing of journals that will submit articles to PubMed Central on behalf of authors.
  • The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has a web-based Guide for Research Institutions focusing on issues of institutional compliance.
  • The Scholarly Publishing and Research Coalition (SPARC) web page offers detailed compliance and background information about the NIH Policy. Of particular note is SPARC’s information for authors, including explanations of author’s rights and sample addenda to publishing agreements to retain these rights.
  • The RoMEO (Rights MEtadata for Open Archiving) Project Web site has information on publisher copyright and archiving policies, searchable by journal title or publisher name.
Posted in the 2008 Issue