Medicine Subject Guide: NIH Public Access

November 19, 2012--The Chronicle of Higher Education--NIH to Begin Enforcing Open-Access Policy on Research It Supports!

As of July 23, 2010, PD/PIs will be unable to enter citations manually into eRA Commons and must use My NCBI’s “My Bibliography” tool to manage their professional bibliographies. More information

The NIH Public Access Policy ensures that the public has access to the published results of NIH funded research.  It requires scientists and researchers to submit final peer-reviewed journal manuscripts generated from NIH funds to the digital archive PubMed Central upon acceptance for publication.  To help advance science and improve human health, the Policy requires that these papers are accessible to the public on PubMed Central no later than 12 months after publication.

“Principal Investigators and their Institutions are responsible for ensuring all terms and conditions of awards are met. This includes the submission of final peer-reviewed manuscripts that arise directly from their awards, even if they are not an author or co-author of the paper. Principal Investigators and their Institutions should ensure that authors are aware of and comply with the NIH Public Access Policy.”  - NIH

The NIH Public Access Mandate was signed into law in late 2007.  This law requires NIH funded researchers to submit or have submitted for them an electronic copy of their final peer-reviewed manuscript to PubMed Central (PMC).  The manuscript will be made publicly available no later than 12 months after the official date of publication.  PubMed Central is a digital repository maintained by the National Library of Medicine.

Who is affected?

The Policy applies to you if your peer-reviewed article is based on work in one or more of the following categories:

1. Directly funded by NIH grant or cooperative agreement active in Fiscal Year 2008 (October 1, 2007-September 30, 2008) or beyond;
2. Directly funded by a contract signed on or after April 7, 2008;
3. Directly funded by the NIH Intramural Program;
4. If you are an NIH employee.

Important Dates

• April 7, 2008: As of April 7, 2008, all articles produced using NIH funds must be submitted to PubMed Central upon acceptance for publication.
• May 25, 2008: As of May 25, 2008, NIH applications, proposals and progress reports must include the PubMed Central reference number when citing an article that falls under the policy and is authored or co-authored by the investigator or arose from the investigator's NIH award.
• Aug 21, 2009: NIHMS ID valid for 3 months
  The NIHMS ID, assigned when the deposit process is started, is only valid for up to 3 months post publication.
• Aug 1, 2010: Using MyNCBI with eSNAP
  NIH requires the use of the My NCBI tool for managing publications in eSNAP progress reports.
• Jul 18, 2011: MyNCBI NIH login link
  Now when you go to log into MyNCBI, you will use the NIH Login option and your eRA Commons credentials.