National Institutes of Health (NIH) Public Access Law in a Nutshell

Conditions

You must comply with the new NIH policy if:

1. Your paper is based on work funded by NIH in Fiscal Year 2008 (October 1, 2007 through September 30, 2008).

   AND

2. Your paper was accepted for publication after April 7, 2008.

Beginning April 7, 2008 all peer-reviewed manuscripts based on NIH funding must be deposited to PubMed Central upon acceptance for publication. Fulltext of the articles will become publicly available and searchable in PubMed Central no later than 12 months after publication in a journal. NIH FAQs

Failure to comply may delay or prevent awarding of NIH funds, although noncompliance is not a factor in the evaluation of grant applications.

Submission Process

Deposit final peer reviewed manuscript, illustrations, etc. at NIH

1. Via NIH Manuscript Submission System (NIHMS) Any author may submit the manuscript, but each Principal Investigator and Institution is responsible for ensuring that the terms and conditions of their award are met (NIH Tutorials).
   1. Include Stanford's copyright addendum when signing publisher's copyright agreement.
   2. Respond to emails from NIH to verify accuracy of the submitted manuscript, illustrations, etc.

   OR

2. Deposit automatically via these journals.
   1. Respond to emails from NIH to verify accuracy of the submitted manuscript, illustrations, etc. and supply grant number(s).

Citation of NIH Funded Research

1. Effective May 28, 2008, include the PubMed Central reference number (PMCID) for each article on NIH applications, proposals or progress reports for papers published on or after April 7, 2008. The number appears in PubMed on the far right and in PubMed Central citations. Do not confuse the PMCID for the fulltext with the PubMed indexing citation (PMID), see clarification.

   Example

   Zerhouni, EA. (2003) A New Vision for the National Institutes of Health. Journal of Biomedicine and Biotechnology (3), 159-160. PMCID: 400215

2. If a PubMed Central reference number is not yet available, include the NIH Manuscript Submission system reference number (NIHMS ID) instead. If neither the PMCID or the NIHMS ID reference numbers are available, cite as "PMCID pending."