NIH Public Access Policy Requires PubMed Central Submission

As of April 7, 2008, all investigators funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) are required to submit, or have submitted for them, an electronic version of final, peer-reviewed manuscripts to NIH's PubMed Central upon acceptance for publication, to be made publicly available no later than 12 months after the official date of publication. The policy applies to peer-reviewed articles based on work directly funded by an NIH grant or cooperative agreement active in FY2008 or beyond; directly funded by a contract signed on or after April 7, 2008; or directly funded by the NIH Intramural Program. The policy also applies if NIH pays your salary and requires that any publishing or copyright agreements concerning submitted articles comply with the policy.

Harvard is developing procedures and resources to assist faculty, students, postdoctoral fellows, and staff.

"A University committee comprised of representatives from the faculty, Countway Library, the Associate VP for Research Administration, Harvard's Office of General Counsel, and a number of administrators from across the University are working on a University-wide compliance program and on creating educational and resource materials to assist authors with meeting this new requirement," said Kathaleen Mercier, director of sponsored programs administration at HSPH. "More information will be available before April 7th."

PubMed Central is a free digital archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature maintained by the National Library of Medicine. In the past, only some journals made their papers routinely available in PubMed Central. The NIH developed the public access policy to increase free access to papers that result from NIH-funded research.

The public access policy, voluntary since 2005, was made mandatory in January as a result of language in a Congressional appropriations bill. Investigators who don't comply may have their funding delayed or prohibited.

As part of the new policy, starting on 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 that resulted from the investigator's NIH award.

"For someone publishing a few papers a year, the process would not be a problem, but with a group publishing hundreds of papers each year, it is not straightforward," said Walter Willett, chair of the HSPH Department of Nutrition. "The reality is that we haven't yet figured out how to make this work smoothly because of different copyright issues with different journals."

To address such concerns and other questions regarding the policy, the University committee is developing guidelines and notices to assure compliance. The HSPH Office of the Dean plans to send a letter to the School's academic appointees describing these resources as soon as they are finalized.

Approximately 65,000 articles are published each year using research generated from NIH funding; however, under the voluntary policy, only about 12 percent were being submitted to PubMed Central, David Lipman of NIH's National Library of Medicine told the web site ScienceNOW.

According to the NIH web site, the PubMed Central manuscript submission process usually takes less than 10 minutes, and some journals submit accepted manuscripts on behalf of authors. For a link to the listing of these journals, see box on this page.

The NIH held a public meeting on March 20 to address concerns about the policy. Comments were accepted on the NIH website from March 7 to 17. An additional 60-day comment period will be announced later in March, and subsequently, any amendments to the policy will be announced within 120 days.

HSPH members who have questions about the new policy may contact Kevin Hiroshi Chamness, 617-432-7308, kchamnes@hsph.harvard.edu; Constance Galanis, 617-998-8826, cgalanis@sphofs.harvard.edu; or Kathaleen Mercier, 617-432-6060, kmercier@sphofs.harvard.edu. All three work in the HSPH Office of Financial Services.

—Amy Roeder