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NIH Public Access Policy: for Researchers and Authors

Essential NIH funded Researcher Information

The "W" questions answered

Who

  • Grant awardees as well as authors funded by NIH grants are responsible for policy compliance.

What

  • NIHMS is what you use to submit your article as an agreement of the NIH grant.

When

  • Immediately upon acceptance of your peer-reviewed article to a journal, it must be submitted it to PMC or NIHMS (which one can change depending on journal "method").
  • The policy has been in place since April, 2008.

Where

  • PubMed Central (PMC) is the repository where your article will be submitted.

Why

  • The public access policy was put into place because the United States government believes that results from government funded research should be available to everybody via the open web.
  • If you do not comply, NIH will stop non-competing continuation grants. They will also not fund future grant applications if you have a record of non-compliance.

Compliance Procedure Outline

  1. Copyright : Own it. Read your agreement before submitting your article to a journal.
  2. Journal "submission" Methods: A, B, C, or D. Which method does your journal use? see fabulous flow chart linked below
    1. https://becker.wustl.edu/sites/default/files/archived-pdfs/NIHComplianceFlowchart.pdf
  3. Submitting your articles: "My Bibliography" through the NCBI website and/or NIHMS
  4. Citing PMCIDs and demonstrating compliance

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