Tuesday, April 8, 2008

NIH Public Access Policy Now in Effect

The new NIH Public Access Policy came into effect this week. The revised policy requires authors funded by NIH arrange for public access to their research manuscripts via PubMed Central within a year following publication. For many journal publishers, this requires negotiation away from the default copyright transfer agreement authors enter with the publisher.

The policy and how to comply with it is addressed at http://publicaccess.nih.gov/. If you are NIH-funded and expect to apply for NIH funding in the future, it's well-worth making sure you understand the new demands.