As many of you know, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) recently announced a revision to its Public Access Policy. The policy now *requires* eligible researchers to deposit copies of final manuscripts upon acceptance into a peer-reviewed journal so that they may be made publicly available within 12 months of publication. This policy applies to any journal articles resulting from research supported in whole or in part by direct funds from NIH. The manuscript is defined as the final version accepted for journal publication and includes all modifications from the publishing and peer-review process. The policy is set to go into place in April 7 2008.
The NIH access policy is an important step in making taxpayer-funded research literature available to as broad a community as possible.
Please note that there is real potential for conflict between adherence to the NIH policy and the common practice in the review and publication process of signing away all copyright for a journal manuscript to the publisher. It will be crucial for authors to ascertain whether a journal you seek to publish in allows author retention of copyright and permission to post to PubMed Central, or to negotiate this during the publication process. On the other hand, a fair number of journals automatically submit their content to PubMed Central and so require no further action on the authors' part -- see http://publicaccess.nih.gov/submit_process_journals.htm for a list of these titles. The policy has potential to affect eligibility for future research grants from NIH. For more information on the NIH policy please see http://publicaccess.nih.gov/.
