NIH Public Access Policy: Overview

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Public Access Policy became effective April 7, 2008. The NIH requires that the author's final version of any peer-reviewed journal article resulting from NIH-funded activities must be submitted to PubMed Central (PMC), NIH's digital repository, where it will be made available to the public within 12 months after the journal article is published.

NIH has recently indicated that it will begin enforcing the policy in the Spring of 2013. In particular, the NIH plans to begin holding processing on non-competing continuation awards if publications arising from their grants are not in compliance. For more information, see the official notice.

The information in this guide will help with several of the compliance issues that University of Pennsylvania authors will need to address and is organized around three steps to compliance:

1. Address Copyright | Information on how to ensure your copyright agreement allows you to submit to PMC.
2. Submit to PMC | Overview of submission methods with links to submission help and publisher policies.
3. Cite PMCIDs | Detail on different types of PubMed IDs and links to help with MyBibliography.

An additional tab contains video tutorials to some of the tools used to manage NIH Public Access compliance

Manuel de la Cruz Gutierrez
Holman Biotech Commons
dmanuel@upenn.edu

If you have questions about the policy and how it affects you as an NIH researcher, please contact your subject expert via email (dmanuel@upenn.edu) or by using the Holman Biotech Commons Ask a Question form.