NIH Public Access Policy Help Guide  

The NIH Public Access Policy implements Division G, Title II,  Section 218 of PL 110-161 (Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2008).  The law states:

The Director of the National Institutes of Health shall require that all investigators funded by the NIH submit or have submitted for them to the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed Central an electronic version of their final, peer-reviewed manuscripts upon acceptance for publication, to be made publicly available no later than 12 months after the official date of publication: Provided That the NIH shall implement the public access policy in a manner consistent with copyright law.

The Policy applies to any manuscript that:

• Is peer-reviewed;
• And, is accepted for publication in a journal on or after April 7, 2008;
• And, arises from:
  • Any direct funding from an NIH grant or cooperative agreement active in Fiscal Year 2008 or beyond, or;
  • Any direct funding from an NIH contract signed on or after April 7, 2008, or;
  • Any direct funding from the NIH Intramural Program, or;
  • An NIH employee

http://publicaccess.nih.gov/determine_applicability.htm

How do I show compliance with the policy?

Use the tabs on this guide to explore the NIH tools created to support the policy.

• MyBibliography - the online tool required to collect citations to articles in scope and generate reports
• NIHMS (NIH Manuscript Submission System) - to submit manuscripts/published articles for processing and deposit into PubMed Central

For more information: NIH FAQs on how to comply with the Public Access Policy

Non-Compliance

Until recently, there has been no clear indication of negative consequences to lack of compliance with the NIH Public Access Policy.  On Feb 14, 2013, NIH issued a Notice stipulating the following:

For non-competing continuation grant awards with a start date of July 1, 2013 or beyond:

1. NIH will dealy processing of an award if publications arising from it are not in compliance with the NIH Public Access Policy.
2. Investigators will need to use MyNCBI to enter papers onto progress reports.  Papers can be associated electronically using the RPPR, or included in the PHS 2590 using the MyNCBI generated PDF report.

The NIH Public Access Compliance Monitor provides an institution with the current compliance status of all journal articles that are associated with the institution and fall under the NIH Public Access Policy.

For more information, see the Public Access Compliance Monitor User Guide.

Excellent short video explaining the NIH Public Access Policy, the submission process, and how authors can maintain compliance.

Posted with permission from the NYU Health Sciences Libraries.