Navigating the New NIH Mandatory Public Access Policy
Librarian
Name: Lynne Turman
Phone: (804) 828-0638
Email: luturman@vcu.edu
Overview
With the signing of the omnibus appropriations bill in December 2007, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) was directed to make mandatory its policy for funded investigators to submit final versions of their manuscripts to PubMed Central, the National Library of Medicine's digital archive. The new provision will require all NIH grantees to deposit their peer-reviewed articles upon acceptance for publication and make them available to the public within 12 months after publication. The legislation comes after many years of lobbying by advocacy groups for such open access language and just as many years of opposition by publishers. See the news release from the Alliance for Taxpayer Access, Dec. 26, 2007 for more details.
On January 11, 2008 the NIH issued the "Revised Policy on Enhancing Public Access to Archived Publications Resulting from NIH-Funded Research" (NIH Guide Notice NOT-OD-08-033) implementing Division G, Title II, Section 218 of PL 110-161 (Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2008 ). There is further information on the NIH Public Access homepage.
What this means for NIH-funded researchers.
- After April 7, 2008, all peer-reviewed articles arising from NIH funds must be submitted to PubMed Central (PMC) upon acceptance for publication.
- Beginning May 25, 2008, NIH applications, proposals, and progress reports must include the PubMed Central 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.
- Chart: When Do NIH-Funded Authors Need to Comply? (PDF)
- As an author, you need to ensure that any copyright agreements with journal publishers allow you to submit the article to PubMed Central. NIH has provided a FAQ with sample language. Other examples of author addenda are available from SPARC and Science Commons.
- If your article is published by one of the journals that submit articles to PubMed Central (PMC) on behalf of its authors, you will not have to submit the article yourself. Note that some journals deposit all articles into PMC but they are on a time delay that will not comply with the Policy. see FAQ item
- If your article will be published in another journal you might have the option of paying for Open Access. Some publishers, like Springer, will also submit to PMC for you as part of your paid package, but not every Open Access publisher will submit for you. Be sure to check. Note: You can include Open Access fees in your grant application.
- If you do not want to pay for Open Access or it is not an option, you will need to be sure that your contract or copyright transfer agreement includes an addendum that allows submission to PMC.
- Once your article is accepted by a publisher and you have a contract, you must submit your article to PMC using the NIH Manuscript Submission system. See the Submission Process on the NIH Public Access site.
- Flowchart: Complying with the Revised NIH Public Access Policy (PDF)
The PubMed Central ID number is not the same as the PubMed number, or PMID, you may have seen in a PubMed search. The PMCID number is displayed in the AbstractPlus format of a citation in PubMed. However, you can also search for your papers in PubMed Central to find the PMCID.
Definition of Open Access Publication
(from the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing)
An Open Access Publication* is one that meets the following two conditions:
- The author(s) and copyright holder(s) grant(s) to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship2†, as well as the right to make small numbers of printed copies for their personal use.
- A complete version of the work and all supplemental materials, including a copy of the permission as stated above, in a suitable standard electronic format is deposited immediately upon initial publication in at least one online repository that is supported by an academic institution, scholarly society, government agency, or other well-established organization that seeks to enable open access, unrestricted distribution, interoperability, and long-term archiving (for the biomedical sciences, PubMed Central is such a repository).
* Open access is a property of individual works, not necessarily journals or publishers.
† Community standards, rather than copyright law, will continue to provide the mechanism for enforcement of proper attribution and responsible use of the published work, as they do now.
NIH has formally requested input from the community regarding the Public Access Policy. The notice asks for comments from all stakeholders regarding the implementation, monitoring and training for compliance with the Policy. Comments are due by May 31, 2008.
NIH Public Access Policy official web site
VCU Libraries Copyright and Publishing web site with more information on author rights, open access and other issues
VCU Office of Research page with guidance on compliance
NIH Public Access Policy: Guide for Research Universities from the Association of Research Libraries
Skill Kit: NIH Manuscript Submission System
Tutorials for the NIH Manuscript Submission System
NIH Extramural Nexus newsletter article
NIH Public Access Policy Implementation from SPARC (Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition)
Disclaimer
This page is developed as a guide to help VCU NIH-funded investigators. For complete, official information, please refer to the NIH Public Access site, especially the FAQ