More Information
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What is the NIH Public Access Policy?
Effective April 7th, 2008, the National Institute of Health (NIH), requires that all investigators funded by NIH submit their peer reviewed and published articles based upon NIH funded research to the National Library of Medicine's PubMed Central.
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How will the New Policy Affect You?
If you are submitting a manuscript for publication to a journal after April 7th 2008, and the results in this manuscript have been supported by an NIH grant, you will need to comply with this policy. The submission process should not take more than ten minutes. See the NIH Public Access Policy page for the submission form and more information on how to comply.
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Compliance Guidelines
To ensure compliance with this new NIH policy, the University of California Office of Research has drafted a letter to publishers that UC authors are advised to use when submitting their manuscripts to journals for review. UCR authors who are reporting research supported by the NIH should attach a copy of this letter to their manuscript and submit both to the publisher when submitting a manuscript for publication. This letter gives notice to the publisher that, if accepted for publication, the article can be posted on PubMed Central without infringing any copyright claims of the publisher.
Rationale for NIH Open Access Policy and Other Background Information
The rationale for the Open Access policy is to:
- Create an archive of peer-reviewed research publications resulting from NIH funding.
- Create a searchable compendium of NIH-funded research to help the agency better manage, understand and monitor scientific productivity.
- Most importantly, to make published results of NIH-funded research more accessible to the public.
Historical Background on Open Access to Federally Funded Research
In an Open Letter to the Higher Education Community (PDF) the provosts of 25 institutions including the University of California, University of Michigan, Harvard, and Northwestern, endorsed FRPAA, the predecessor to the new NIH public access mandate, stating that, "FRPAA is good for education and good for research. It is good for the American public, and it promotes broad democratic access to knowledge." As stated by the Alliance for Taxpayer Access, "American taxpayers are entitled to open access on the Internet to the peer-reviewed scientific articles on research funded by the U.S. Government."
Among the many other supporters of FRPAA are Public Knowledge, National Society of Consulting Soil Scientists, and the Association of College and Research Libraries.
Open Access Internationally
Initiatives to make taxpayer-funded research publicly available, often referred to as "open access mandates," is by no means unique to the United States. In 2006, the European Commission issued a report examining the scientific publication system in Europe; the report recommends, among other things, "guaranteed public access to publicly-funded research." In the UK, the Medical Research Council mandates that researchers' findings must be made freely available to the public within six months of publication.