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The new National Institutes of Health (NIH) Public Access Policy goes into effect on May 2, 2005. The new Policy requests that all NIH-funded investigators submit to PubMed Central an electronic version of the author's final manuscript upon acceptance for publication, including all modifications from the peer-review process. This policy will enable the NIH to monitor and archive the output of research funded by NIH, and also to ensure the availability of research results for the benefit of the public, health care providers, educators and scientists in a single, permanent, open-access archive.
In a letter to faculty issued on April 26, the Provost, Vice Chancellor for Research, and the University Librarian strongly encouraged NIH grant recipients to comply with the new NIH policy.
The policy applies to peer-reviewed original research publications that have been supported, in-whole or in-part, with direct costs from NIH, but does not apply to book chapters, editorials, letters to the editor, reviews, or conference proceedings. This policy does not change the ability of either the author or the publisher to assert copyright. NIH will provide a secure website within PubMed Central for depositing manuscripts; however, the submission system is currently still in development.
The UIC Library will serve as a resource for finding answers to questions and concerns as the implementation of the NIH Public Access Policy is realized. A new UIC Library Web site on scholarly publishing and open access, http://scholarlypub.lib.uic.edu, is under development. It currently includes links to relevant NIH documents. As further information is released, it will be added to the website, including:
- Instructions about how to submit manuscripts to PubMed Central
- Links to any publisher statements regarding copyright issues and
compliance with the NIH policy
- Further statements by NIH regarding the policy
The Library has also set up a listserv for faculty to submit questions about the process. If you have questions about the process that are not answered on the Web site, please send an e-mail to the listserv: scholarlypub@uic.edu.
The NIH policy can be found at http://publicaccess.nih.gov/.
