January 2008 - Public Access Mandate

PUBLIC ACCESS MANDATE MADE LAW

President Bush signs omnibus appropriations bill, including National Institutes of Health research access provision

February Update: NIH Manuscript Submission System

On December 26, 2007, President Bush signed the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2007 (H.R. 2764) which directs the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to provide public access to its funded research. NIH implemented its Public Access Policy as a voluntary measure in 2005. This new mandate requires researchers funded by NIH to submit their manuscripts to PubMed Central®. Scientists who publish in journals that do not submit articles directly to PubMed Central must deposit their manuscripts using the NIH Manuscript Submission (NIHMS) system. The NIH Public Access Web site provides more information about the policy. Also, the NIHMS provides additional policy and help information.

A separate submission to the NIHMS system is not necessary if a manuscript has been accepted by a journal that submits articles directly to PubMed Central on behalf of their authors. A list of these journals is available at: http://publicaccess.nih.gov/submit_process_journals.htm. Publication in one of these journals requires no further action on part of authors to comply with the submission requirement of the NIH Public Access Policy.

January 3, 2008

Washington, D.C. – December 26, 2007 – President Bush has signed into law the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2007 (H.R. 2764), which includes a provision directing the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to provide the public with open online access to findings from its funded research. This is the first time the U.S. government has mandated public access to research funded by a major agency.

The provision directs the NIH to change its existing Public Access Policy, implemented as a voluntary measure in 2005, so that participation is required for agency-funded investigators. Researchers will now be required to deposit electronic copies of their peer-reviewed manuscripts into the National Library of Medicine’s online archive, PubMed Central. Full texts of the articles will be publicly available and searchable online in PubMed Central no later than 12 months after publication in a journal.

"Facilitated access to new knowledge is key to the rapid advancement of science," said Harold Varmus, president of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Nobel Prize Winner. "The tremendous benefits of broad, unfettered access to information are already clear from the Human Genome Project, which has made its DNA sequences immediately and freely available to all via the Internet. Providing widespread access, even with a one-year delay, to the full text of research articles supported by funds from all institutes at the NIH will increase those benefits dramatically."

"Public access to publicly funded research contributes directly to the mission of higher education," said David Shulenburger, Vice President for Academic Affairs at NASULGC (the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges). "Improved access will enable universities to maximize their own investment in research, and widen the potential for discovery as the results are more readily available for others to build upon."

"Years of unrelenting commitment and dedication by patient groups and our allies in the research community have at last borne fruit," said Sharon Terry, President and CEO of Genetic Alliance. “We’re proud of Congress for their unrelenting commitment to ensuring the success of public access to NIH-funded research. As patients, patient advocates, and families, we look forward to having expanded access to the research we need."

"Congress has just unlocked the taxpayers’ $29 billion investment in NIH,” said Heather Joseph, Executive Director of SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, a founding member of the ATA). “This policy will directly improve the sharing of scientific findings, the pace of medical advances, and the rate of return on benefits to the taxpayer."

Joseph added, “On behalf of the Alliance for Taxpayer Access, I’d like to thank everyone who worked so hard over the past several years to bring about implementation of this much-needed policy."

For more information, and a timeline detailing the evolution of the NIH Public Access Policy beginning May 2004, visit the ATA Web site at http://www.taxpayeraccess.org.

Return to previous page Return to the previous page