Endocrine Insider
January 24, 2008

In response to language in U.S. Public Law 110-161—the omnibus spending package signed into law by President Bush in December—the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has implemented a new policy on public access of NIH-funded research. The law states that research articles describing work supported by U.S. funding agencies must be made freely available to the public within 12 months of publication. While the NIH already has guidelines in place regarding voluntary submission of work to PubMed Central (PMC), the new law makes submission mandatory.

The new policy will be implemented on April 7, 2008, and will apply to all articles accepted for publication on or after that date. NIH will enforce the policy by requiring grant applicants to cite the PMC or NIH manuscript submission number of any papers cited or listed in the grant application that resulted from work funded by NIH. This requirement will be effective as of the May 25, 2008, application deadline.

The complete NIH guidelines can be viewed here:

http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-08-033.html

The Endocrine Society participates in a pilot project in which Society journals have been submitting to PMC accepted manuscripts on behalf of authors upon publication and well within the 12-month period as required by the new law. Society journals will continue this practice.