NIH Public Access Policy

The Authors Alliance has written a set of questions and answers to what they anticipate can be some problems that will arise when authors are negotiating their publishing contracts with journals.

They acknowledge that it will take some time to discover what issues will arise, but they offer some very good advice for several different situations that may occur, and they include some links and language from publishers and resources that are very helpful.

This guidance can be found at The NIH Public Access Policy: Q&A for Authors.

The Authors Alliance recommends that authors:

• Seek out journals that offer zero embargo deposit to a repository (in this case, PubMed Central).
• Seek out journals that are fully open access, and thus have no restrictions on repository deposit. 
• Budget for extra article processing charges for the future, to cover open access fees that will allow them zero embargo deposit (although how these fees are requested in grant proposals should be worded very carefully, since the NIH has stated that "Journal or publisher fees that arise during the course of the publication process for the sole purpose of submitting the Author Accepted Manuscript to PubMed Central are not allowable costs. Compliance with the Policy does not require the payment of an open access fee to a journal."

Communication among coauthors is essential while preparing the manuscript for publication. The NIH has three statements authors should include in the manuscript to indicate they are NIH funded and must have the right to deposit manuscripts to PubMed Central:

1. A statement reflecting the NIH Grants Policy Statement:
   • "Research reported in this [publication, release] was supported by [name of the Institute, Center, or other funding component] of the National Institutes of Health under grant number [specific NIH grant number in this format: R01GM012345]."
   • Failing to include grant numbers in the manuscript is grounds for non-compliance under the new policy.
2. A statement reflecting the Government Use License (Federal Purpose License):
   • “This manuscript is the result of funding in whole or in part by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). It is subject to the NIH Public Access Policy. Through acceptance of this federal funding, NIH has been given a right to make this manuscript publicly available in PubMed Central upon the Official Date of Publication, as defined by NIH.”
3. A disclaimer: 
   • "The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health."

If you are not preparing the manuscript yourself for submission to the journal, make sure the first author/corresponding author has included these statements, as well as all NIH award numbers which supported your work. 

If you are preparing the manuscript for submission to the journal, extend the same courtesy to your coauthors: ask them if they were NIH funded for their roles and ask them to supply you with award numbers. 

Communication with the journal upon submission of the manuscript for review and publication can be more complicated.

The submitting / corresponding author should:

1. Read the author agreement / copyright agreement / contract carefully and be sure to indicate federal (NIH) funding in any places where it is indicated.
   • Some journals / publishers do have clauses in their copyright agreements that acknowledge government use and the author's right to archive a manuscript in a federally-designated repository. However, if the corresponding author does not read the agreement carefully and indicate NIH funding (if asked), then the rights to self-archive in PubMed Central can be lost or disputed by the publisher.
2. Find out from the journal or publisher if they archive manuscripts to PubMed Central, and if they do so for free. 
   • The NIH states that extra APCs for the sole purpose of archiving to PMC are non-allowable, but the authors may opt to pay for this assistance without support from the NIH (though these charges are often quite expensive).
   • It helps to look up your journal's instructions for authors, or check the JISC Open Policy Finder for your journal's open access practices.
3. Communicate to the journal / publisher editorial or production staff that you are federally obligated to deposit the Author Accepted Manuscript (authors' version, post peer review) without embargo, to PubMed Central. Some journals claim that their copyright agreement supersedes all other parties' claims to copyright.
   • In cases where the publisher insists that the authors must wait for a specified embargo period to deposit to PMC, the NIH and the Authors Alliance suggest authors consider other journals.