Endocrine Insider
October 16, 2008 

In response to feedback on a Request for Information (RFI), the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has made some adjustments to its implementation of the mandate to make all NIH-funded research results publicly available. During the RFI comment period, NIH heard from the scientific, publishing, and patient-advocate communities regarding their concerns about the NIH's implementation policy, which requires all NIH grantees to submit to PubMed Central (PMC), or to have submitted for them, all journal articles arising from NIH-funded research.  To show compliance, NIH grant applicants and recipients must indicate on all applications, progress reports, and final reports the PMC identification numbers (PMCIDs) of all relevant publications arising from their grants.  The scientific community expressed concern about the excess burden that these requirements would place on grantees, particularly in cases in which the grantee may not be the corresponding author on the paper or in which the PMCID is not readily available.

The Society's journals submit published articles on behalf of their authors if the authors identify themselves as NIH-funded scientists.  However, not all journals provide this service, in which case investigators must submit the accepted manuscripts themselves.  Initially, NIH required the Program Director or Principle Investigator (PD/PI) to submit the manuscripts.  In response to concerns about the additional time burden placed on the PD/PI, NIH changed its policy in June to allow submissions by individuals other than the PD/PI.  Such an individual may be an author on the paper or someone else designated by the PD/PI.

To help authors find and report their PMCIDs, the National Library of Medicine created a new tool that can cross-reference PubMed IDs and PMCIDs in batches.  The new tool became available in August and allows authors to find their PMCIDs by providing PubMed references for their papers.  The tool may be accessed here: 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/pmctopmid.

More information about the feedback the NIH received in response to the RFI and about changes to the implementation policy is available on the NIH website at http://publicaccess.nih.gov/analysis_of_comments_nih_public_access_policy.pdf.