NIH public access policy changing April 7

Starting in April, the National Institutes of Health will require principal investigators to place a copy of all articles stemming from NIH-funded research in PubMed Central, the agency's free online archive. Those who don't comply could lose funding.

The new public access policy applies to all peer-reviewed articles accepted for publication on or after April 7. NIH-funded researchers must submit the final journal-published version or an electronic version of their final peer-reviewed manuscript to the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed Central. Investigators or their publishers must submit manuscripts, graphics and associated materials within 12 months of journal publication. Beginning May 25, investigators submitting NIH applications, proposals or progress reports also must include the PubMed Central reference number when citing articles covered by the policy.

Journal publishers fall into three categories regarding the NIH policy change:
  • Those who will place the article in PubMed Central on the author’s behalf.
  • Those whose existing policies allow authors to provide articles themselves.
  • Those who do not allow deposit of articles unless special provision is made at the time authors transfer copyright to them. This includes publishers such as the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association and Springer Verlag.
It is important for authors to carefully review their copyright agreements for articles accepted by these publishers and negotiate the necessary permissions to comply with NIH’s policy before signing over the publication rights.

The UNL Libraries Office of Scholarly Communications and the Office of Research are working to help faculty comply with the mandate by: directing article submissions toward NIH-compliant publishers; advising authors how to retain the necessary copyrights or permissions to comply with the deposit requirement; and helping authors provide their articles in cases where the publisher does not.

The Office of Research has notified all faculty with NIH funding of the policy change and the resources available to help them comply.

The latest information about NIH policy implementation, copyrights and authors’ rights is available on the UNL Libraries' Digital Commons Web site.

For more information contact Paul Royster, UNL Libraries, proyster@unl.edu, 472-3628.


    




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