Federal Public Access Policy

FEDERAL PUBLIC ACCESS POLICY

NIH

Since FY 2008, the NIH Public Access policy (NOT-OD-13-042) has required that published NIH-funded research be freely accessible to all; not only those with access to journals in which articles are published. Thus, all NIH-funded investigators are required to submit, upon acceptance for publication, an electronic version of their final peer-reviewed manuscript to NIH’s PubMed Central to be made available no later than twelve (12) months after the official publication date. Anyone submitting an application, proposal, or progress report to NIH must link to My NCBI to report publications and must include the PubMed Central reference number (PMCID) when citing articles that arise from their NIH-funded research.

In 2013, The NIH updated its Public Access Policy making changes that represent a significant shift in NIH’s enforcement, in addition to mandating the use of My NCBI to record publications on Progress Reports through the RPPR (the Research Performance Progress Report). Failure to comply will result in funding delays for noncompeting continuation awards.

NSF

The National Science Foundation (NSF) released its Public Access Plan on March 18, 2015. This plan, entitled ‘Today’s Data, Tomorrow’s Discoveries,’ requires Investigators with NSF funding to deposit “either the version of record or the final accepted peer-reviewed manuscript in peer-reviewed scholarly journals and papers in juried conference proceedings or transactions” be deposited in a public access compliant repository designated by NSF. These requirements apply to publications “resulting from new awards resulting from proposals submitted, or due, on or after January 2016.”

AHRQ

In February 2016, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) announced the AHRQ Public Access Policy for Scientific Publications (The AHRQ Policy) (NOT-HS-16-008), which established a policy for public access to scientific publications and scientific data in digital format resulting from AHRQ funding. The AHRQ Public Access Policy requires authors to submit their final peer-reviewed accepted manuscript to PubMed Central. The policy also requires researchers funded by AHRQ to submit data management plans. The data management plans will need to include details for sharing final research data in digital format or an explanation why data sharing is not possible.