By now, researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) should be familiar with the agency’s requirement that all papers arising from NIH-funded research be deposited in the National Library of Medicine’s online public archive, PubMed Central. Although the mandate was signed into law on December 26, 2007, it was not until April 7, 2008 that researchers were actually required to submit final peer-reviewed manuscripts to PubMed Central on acceptance for publication. Given that there is a lag between acceptance and publication, and that public access to these articles may be delayed for up to twelve months after publication, we have yet to see the anticipated explosive growth of PubMed Central, though submissions have risen substantially.
Since May 2005, NIH has tracked the number of articles submitted to PubMed Central through its Manuscript Submission System (NIHMS). During most of 2005 and 2006, there were rarely more than 500 articles submitted each month. In 2007, the average number of articles submitted monthly doubled to about 1,000. By April 2008, there were about 2,500 articles submitted each month, with submissions spiking to 4,000 in July 2008 and 3,500 in August 2008 and October 2008. But since NIH estimates that 80,000 articles reporting on NIH-funded research are published annually, it is apparent that many authors are not yet in compliance with the mandate.
NIH clearly states that compliance with the policy is now a “Term and Condition of Award” for all grants and cooperative agreements. If a researcher fails to comply, “NIH may take proactive action to protect the Federal government’s interests, including placing special conditions on awards or precluding the grantee from obtaining future awards for a specified period, or may take action designed to prevent future non-compliance, such as closer monitoring”.
Libraries, scientific and professional societies, universities, and the NIH have launched educational campaigns, Web sites, and information toolkits about how to comply with the policy. But not all researchers and authors fully understand their responsibility, and there is a considerable amount of confusion and misinformation. Publishers continue to review their author agreements and policies on how articles can be submitted. An August 2008 Association of Research (ARL) Libraries report titled “PubMed Central Deposit and Author Rights”, found that publication agreements vary substantially in the terms of deposit, the length of the embargo period, and the rights that are retained by the author.
Detractors continue harsh criticism of the NIH Public Access Policy. In September 2008, John Conyers, a representative from Michigan, introduced a bill in the House of Representatives that aimed to overturn the NIH open access mandate and to block other government entities from adopting comparable guidelines. The hearing on the bill was adjourned without a resolution, but it is anticipated that the bill will be proposed again during 2009. Numerous library associations, legal scholars, Nobel Prize laureates in science, and others expressed strong opposition to Conyers’ bill, entitled the “Fair Copyright in Research Works Act” (H.R. 6845).
Nevertheless, the months ahead should bring rapid growth in the number of publicly available research articles as authors find their way through the maze of submission challenges and as the one-year embargo period expires for the articles that were accepted for publication in April 2008.
Note: The above content is adapted from an article written by the author for the MLA News, February, 2009.
~ Barbara A. Epstein