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Details of Revised NIH Public Access Policy Published

Posted January 15th, 2008 by Ellen Duranceau

The National Institutes of Health (NIH), as previously reported, was directed by new legislation to mandate open access to all peer-reviewed journal articles published as a result of NIH grant funds, through PubMed Central, the digital archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature. NIH has now revised its home page, FAQ, and Public Access Policy, describing the new mandatory submission process.

Details that may be of interest to the MIT community:

• TIMING: The policy applies to all peer-reviewed articles that are accepted for publication on or after April 7, 2008.
• PUBLISHER AGREEMENTS & COPYRIGHT: From the FAQ: “Authors should work with the publisher before any rights are transferred to ensure that all conditions of the NIH Public Access Policy can be met. Authors should avoid signing any agreements with publishers that do not allow the author to comply with the NIH Public Access Policy.”
  • A publisher’s compliance with the NIH policy can be checked by reviewing the SHERPA site.
  • The NIH suggests some possible language that can be used to modify a publisher’s agreement: ““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.”
  • MIT offers authors an amendment to publisher agreements that was developed to support MIT authors who wanted to comply with the original NIH policy. The amendment language allows authors to comply with the revised policy as well. Download the amendment.
  • The new policy does not change the author’s copyrights’ status. The author can still “assign [copyrights] to journals, subject to the limited right that must be retained…to post the works in accordance with the Policy” in PubMed Central.
• PUBLICATION COSTS: NIH will reimburse for publication costs, including author fees. (Some journals charge article processing fees for articles that will be made openly available.  NIH’s policy is to cover such costs.)
• POSTING TO PubMed Central: Posting is required even if you publish in an open access journal, or if the article is freely accessible on the publisher’s website.

For further information about the new NIH policy, or using the MIT amendment, please consult the Scholarly Publication website, or contact:

Ellen Finnie Duranceau / Scholarly Publishing & Licensing Consultant / MIT Libraries / x38483 / efinnie@mit.edu

MIT Libraries News » Blog Archive » Details of Revised NIH Public Access Policy Published