NIH Public Access Policy

There are two main requirements of the NIH Public Access Policy:

  • Effective April 7, 2008 Principal Investigators must ensure that electronic versions of any peer-reviewed manuscripts arising from NIH funding and accepted for publication after that date are deposited in PubMed Central (PMC), NIH's digital archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature, and that the articles may be made publicly available by PMC no later than 12 months after publication.
  • Effective May 25, 2008, anyone submitting an application, proposal, or progress report to NIH must include the PubMed Central reference number (PMCID) when citing articles that arise from their NIH funded research.

To read additional details about this policy, see the Harvard Guidelines and Requirements on the NIH Public Access Policy.