NIH Updates

What is the NIH Public Access policy?


The NIH Public Access Policy requires scientists to submit journal final peer-reviewed manuscripts that arise from NIH funds to the digital archive PubMed Central (http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/). You are likely aware of PubMed, which has been used routinely for many years to find published articles. On publication, your article will automatically appear in PubMed. Despite the similar name, PubMed Central is different than PubMed. It is the author’s responsibility to ensure that their articles are submitted to PubMed Central to be in compliance with the NIH Public Access Policy.


How to Comply with the Public Access Policy


1. First, be aware that the NIH Public Access Policy applies only to manuscripts published in journals after April 7, 2008; you are NOT required to submit manuscripts published prior to this date.


2. Before submitting a manuscript to a journal, contact the journal editor, or check the journal website, to determine whether the journal is compliant with the NIH Public Access Policy. If not compliant, the investigator should NOT submit their article to that journal.


3. If compliant, determine whether the publisher will submit the accepted article to PubMed Central on the author’s behalf, or whether the author needs to submit it. Also ask if the publisher charges a fee to submit your article to PubMed Central.  Sometimes this is quite large.  If you must submit your article, make sure you determine the journal’s specific submission policy. For example, some journals allow you to submit only your final peer-reviewed manuscript—the peer-reviewed paper accepted for journal publication including all modifications from the peer review process—as opposed to the final verbatim published pdf. Also, some journals require that the submitted manuscript be embargoed for 1 year from the date of publication (i.e., not released to the public until this time). Both of these requirements are fully compliant with the NIH Public Access Policy.


Important! NIH has a list of journals on the public access website. This list is very misleading and does not represent all publishers/journals that are compliant with NIH’s Public Access Policy. In fact, hundreds of compliant journals are not listed. For example, the three journals whose editors are in U of U Pediatrics (Albertine, Anatomical Record; Carey, American Journal of Medical Genetics; and Schoenwolf, Developmental Dynamics) are all fully compliant with the NIH Public Access Policy, yet none appear on this list.