In January 2008, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) adopted a revised “public access policy.” Many may be familiar with the term “open access,” commonly used by researchers to promote free exchange of scientific and technical information among them. The term “public access” refers to the efforts to make research developments that were publicly funded available to the general public, not just the research community. Medical research has been the primary issue, and the one of most interest to the public.

Because of this demand and discussion in Congress that endorsed the rights of the public to access research they have funded, the NIH instituted and promoted a recommendation that researchers voluntarily deposit copies of their scientific papers in the PubMed Central archive. Response to these recommendations was very low—less than 4%. Congress reviewed the NIH report of this low rate of response. They enacted the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2008¹ that included a provision, making the NIH policy and guidelines mandatory rather than voluntary.

The new mandatory requirement to deposit NIH funded published research in the public archive caused immediate confusion among authors, PIs, publishers, and libraries. The new statutory requirements include:

      • All investigators funded by the NIH must submit, or have submitted for them, to the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed Central archive, an electronic version of the final, peer-reviewed manuscripts.

      • They shall be submitted upon acceptance for publication.

      • They will be made available to the public no later than twelve months after the official date of publication.

      • Implementation of the guidelines must be consistent with copyright law.

      • The guidelines apply to all manuscripts submitted for publication after April 7, 2008 and funded by an NIH grant that was active on or after October 1, 2007.

The traditional publication process for a peer-reviewed journal requires that the author sign a copyright agreement with the publisher. These agreements give the publishers broad rights to re-distribute and re-use the content that they publish in their journals. Copyright law, and the assigned rights of the publishers under these agreements, are not necessarily consistent with the NIH mandate.

Most publishers recognize that it is in their own best interest to facilitate compliance with the NIH guidelines. Many have already modified their copyright agreements, or are in the process of doing so. Some publishers will even submit the accepted, peer-reviewed manuscript to the PubMed Central on behalf of the author, thus encouraging authors to view them as “preferred” publishers. A list of these journals is available on the NIH Web site.

Other publishers who will not submit on behalf of the authors will agree to having the manuscript—and in some cases the final pdf version—made publicly available in the archive at the twelve month deadline required in the policy. In these cases, the PI, or an agent acting on behalf of the PI such as the library, must submit the manuscript to the archive. A few publishers have not addressed these issues.

All manuscripts submitted for publication, which were NIH funded research and involved a Rockefeller PI, must also be reported to the Markus Library. The library will track the manuscript, report them to the Office of General Counsel of the university for review of copyright, and submit manuscripts when required to the repository. The counsel office will notify PIs when it is appropriate and approved for them to sign the copyright release to the publisher. Rockefeller authors should not sign any copyright forms pertaining to NIH funded manuscripts until they have received this approval. When necessary, the counsel office may negotiate terms with the publisher that will allow compliance with the NIH mandate for public access.
A white paper on the new mandatory guidelines and compliance policy was prepared in February 2008 by the Scholarly Publishing & Association Resources Coalition (SPARC), Science Commons, and the Association of Research Libraries. It is available at http://www.arl.org/sparc/

The Rockefeller Web site has important information and links to additional sources, including the university’s statement on Rockefeller Compliance by Vice President for Academic Affairs, Dr. Michael Young, at http://www.rockefeller.edu/sr-pd/index.php?page=NIH_PublicAccessPolicy

Reference:

¹ Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2008, Public Law No. 110-161, Division G, Title II, Paragraph 218.