Public access means providing access to published research free of charge to everyone. The US federal government, through the Office of Science Policy, promotes this through its research funding policies.
NIH-funded investigators are required to submit to the National Library of Medicine's Pubmed Central an electronic version of their final accepted manuscript upon acceptance for publication, to be made publicly available no later than 12 months after the official date of publication.
Yes, if your peer-reviewed article meets any of the following criteria:
· Directly funded by an NIH grant or cooperative agreement active in Fiscal Year 2008
(October 1, 2007- September 30, 2008) or beyond;
· Directly funded by a contract signed on or after April 7, 2008;
· Directly funded by the NIH Intramural Program
· If NIH pays your salary.
A reminder that NIH funding includes not only grants, but cooperative agreements, and contacts. If the author acknowledges NIH support in the article it should more than likely comply with the policy.
The Principal Investigator (PI) or Grantee is responsible for compliance, whether or not he or she is an author on a manuscript, and to make certain that all personnel, including subcontractors, adhere to the each agency's Public Access Policy.
1. Address Copyright issues. Make certain that the publishing agreement allows for deposition of manuscripts into PubMed Central. Investigators may check JISC Open Policy Finder for journal policies before submitting their work to a journal. Check your publishing agreement before signing it--the author must maintain the right to comply with the NIH requirement. Should you need to negotiate with the publisher to ensure that you can deposit the manuscript into PubMed Central, include language such as this, written by the NIH:
"Journal acknowledges that Author retains the right to provide a copy of the final manuscript to the NIH upon acceptance for Journal publication, for public archiving in PubMed Central as soon as possible but no later than 12 months after publication by Journal."
2. Deposit the article in PubMed Central by one of the following methods:
I. Publish in a journal that automatically submits the final published article to PubMed Central without author involvement.
II. Make arrangements to have a publisher deposit a specific final published article in PubMed Central. This may be a fee-based open access option; however, publishing in an open access journal does not, in itself, meet the NIH public access mandate. Get confirmation from the publisher that they are going to deposit the final article in PubMed Central.
III. The Principal Investigator or Author (or their designate) submits a copy of the final peer-reviewed accepted manuscript to the NIH Manuscript Submission System (NIHMS). The author personally verifies by email both the content and the format. A complete description of this process is here: NIHMS Overview - NIHMS. The principal investigator must review and verify the content several times during the submission process, which is not complete until your article receives a PubMed Central ID (PMCID).
IV. In a variation of Method III above, some publishers deposit the manuscript files in the NIHMS, provide contact information for a corresponding author, and designate the number of months after publication when the paper may be made publicly available in PMC. The author still has the responsibility for completing the submission of final peer-reviewed manuscript deposited by publisher in the NIHMS.
3. Cite. Effective May 25, 2008, anyone submitting an application, proposal or progress report to the NIH must include the PMC reference number when citing articles arising from their NIH funded research. The PMID to PMC ID converter is used to translate one type of ID to the other; however, your article will have a PMC ID only if you have taken steps outlined in 2, above, to deposit your article in PubMed Central. Complete information about the difference between PMID and PMCID and how to cite your work at various points in the publication process is on the NIH website.
DEADLINES FOR COMPLIANCE
The author's final accepted manuscript including all corrections / edits after peer review must be submitted to PubMed Central within 3 months of publication. The manuscript must be made publicly accessible within 12 months of publication. NOTE: This policy will change on December 31, 2025. Any articles subject to this policy that are accepted for publication on or after December 31, 2025 must be made available to the public immediately upon publication. The 12 month embargo period will no longer be allowed.