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NIH policy seeks open journals

Information Outlook, March, 2005

A new National Institutes of Health policy is designed to accelerate the public's access to published articles resulting from NIH-funded research.

The policy--the first of its kind for NIH--calls on scientists to release to the public manuscripts from research supported by NIH as soon as possible, and within 12 months of final publication.

These peer-reviewed, NIH-funded research publications will be available in a Web-based archive to be managed by the National Library of Medicine, a component of NIH.

A NIH press release said the online archive is designed to increase the public's access to health-related publications at a time when demand for such information is on a steady rise.

The NIH release said the policy will archive several important goals, including:

* Creating a stable archive of peer-reviewed research publications resulting from NIH-funded studies to ensure their permanent preservations.

* Securing a searchable compendium of these research publications that NIH and its awardees can use to manage more efficiently and to understand better their research portfolios, monitor scientific productivity, and, ultimately, help set research priorities.

* Making published results of NIH-funded research more readily accessible to the public, health care providers, educators, and scientists.

Beginning May 2, the policy requests that NIH-funded scientists submit an electronic version of the author's final manuscript upon acceptance for publication. The author's final manuscript is defined as the final version accepted for journal publication, and includes all modifications from the publishing peer review process.

The policy gives authors the flexibility to designate a specific time frame for public release - ranging from immediate public access after final publication to a 12- month delay - when they submit their manuscripts to NIH. Authors will be strongly encouraged to exercise their right to specify that their articles will be publicly available through PubMed Central as soon as possible.

PubMed (http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov), a part of the NIH National Library of Medicine, is the agency's digital repository of full-text, peer-reviewed biomedical, behavioral, and clinical research journals. It is a publicly accessible, stable, permanent, and searchable electronic archive.

The release of this policy follows months of intensive deliberations with representatives of patient and scientific organizations, researchers, and publishers. NIH posted the draft policy for public comment in September 2004, and received and reviewed more than 6,000 public comments.

Additional information on the new policy and related documents can be found at www.nih.gov/about/publicaccess/index.htm.>