NIH requires articles to be submitted to PubMed

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has issued a revised Public Access Policy which now requires that all peer-reviewed articles resulting from NIH direct funding that are accepted for publication on or after April 7, 2008 must be submitted to the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed Central repository within 12 months of the official publication date. PubMed Central is a ditigal archive of articles which provides open access to the public.

Since investigators at Virginia Tech own the intellectual property of their academic scholarship, it becomes each investigator’s responsibility to ensure that any publication or copyright agreements that they enter into grants them the authority to submit their articles to NIH’s public repository in accordance with the law. This may require individual investigators to negotiate with publishers for the right to deposit their published works in the PubMed Central repository.

Detailed instructions on how to comply with the NIH Public Access Policy is provided on the NIH website. Included on this site is a listing of journals that will submit your article to PubMEd Central on your behalf. Additional information gives guidance on addressing copyright issues and how to submit your manuscript.

Beginning May 25, 2008, all NIH proposals, applications, and progress reports that cite an article that falls under the revised Public Access Policy must include the PubMed Central reference number. This applies to any article authored or co-authored by the investigator or to an article that resulted from the investigator’s NIH award.