How to Comply

Who is Responsible for Compliance?

Principal Investigators and their Institutions are responsible for ensuring all terms and conditions of awards are met. This includes the submission of articles that arise directly from their awards, even if they are not an author or co-author of the publication. Principal Investigators and their Institutions should ensure that the authors are aware of and comply with the NIH Public Access Policy.

How to Comply

What do I have to do to comply with the NIH Public Access Policy?

Compliance is a three-step process.

1) Address Copyright. Before you sign a publication agreement or similar copyright transfer agreement, make sure that the agreement allows the article to be submitted to NIH in accordance with the Public Access Policy. You can use Yale's cover letter and copyright addendum (available as Word documents at http://www.yale.edu/grants/toolkit.html) and include them with your article when submitting to a publisher.

2) Submit the article to NIH. This can be done in a number of ways:

a. You or someone in your organization (e.g., an assistant or your library) may deposit a copy of the peer reviewed manuscript in the NIH Manuscript Submission (NIHMS) system (http://www.nihms.nih.gov/).

b. Your publisher may send the peer-reviewed manuscript files to the NIH Manuscript Submission system for you.

In both cases above (a and b), you still will have to verify and approve the manuscript personally via the NIH Manuscript Submission system, which will send you an email message requesting this action.

c. Some publishers have agreed to make the final published article of every NIH-funded article publicly available in PubMed Central within 12 months of publication. (For these journals, you do not need to do anything to fulfill the submission requirement of the NIH Public Access Policy. See http://publicaccess.nih.gov/submit_process_journals.htm for a list of these journals.

NIH recommends that "authors should avoid signing any agreements with publishers that do not allow the author to comply with the NIH Public Access Policy." (http://publicaccess.nih.gov/FAQ.htm#c2)

or

Check to see which publishers already comply with the NIH submission policy.

3) Cite. As of May 25, 2008, when citing an article in NIH applications, proposals, and progress reports that falls under the Policy, and was authored or co-authored by you or arose from your NIH award, you must include the PubMed Central reference number (PMCID). This policy includes applications submitted to the NIH for the May 25, 2008 due date and subsequent due dates.

Intramural researchers must ensure a PubMed Central reference number is included in the Institute's Annual Report for any publication they have authored or co-authored.

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