NIH Public Access Policy

On April 7, 2008 the new National Institutes of Health (NIH) public access policy took effect.

The Law

"The NIH Public Access Policy implements Division G, Title II, Section 218 of PL 110-161 (Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2008). The law states:

The Director of the National Institutes of Health shall require that all investigators funded by the NIH submit or have submitted for them to the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed Central an electronic version of their final, peer-reviewed manuscripts upon acceptance for publication, to be made publicly available no later than 12 months after the official date of publication: Provided, that the NIH shall implement the public access policy in a manner consistent with copyright law."

The Submission Process

http://publicaccess.nih.gov/submit_process.htm

Summary for Complying with the NIH Public Access Policy
PDF flowchart

NIH List of Journals That Submit Articles To PubMed Central
http://publicaccess.nih.gov/submit_process_journals.htm

SHERPA/RoMEO - Guide to publisher copyright & open access archiving policies
http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo.php

NIH Help Guide
http://nihms.nih.gov/web-help/index.html

Finding Your NIH or PubMedCentral (PMC) ID Numbers
http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/crerar/using/reference/pmcid.html

EndNote, RefWorks, and Reference Manager Handling of PubMedCentral (PMC) ID Numbers
http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/crerar/using/reference/bibtools.html

More information on the NIH Public Access Policy

Association of Research Libraries (ARL) NIH Public Access Policy Guide for Research Universities
http://www.arl.org/sc/implement/nih/guide/index.shtml

Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries (AAHSL) NIH Public Access Toolkit
http://www.aahsl.org/new/display_page.cfm?file_id=306#1

SPARC guide on NIH Policy Implementation
http://www.arl.org/sparc/advocacy/nih/

Where to go for help at University of Chicago

University Research Administration
http://researchadmin.uchicago.edu/

BSD Office of Research Services
http://ors.bsd.uchicago.edu/

If you have any additional questions about the NIH Public Access Policy, contact nih-publ-access@lists.uchicago.edu