Several new developments are happening in terms of supporting public access to research within the United States. One comes from a granting agency (HHMI) and the other is new language in current legislation before Congress.
The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) just announced that it will require its scientists to publish their original research articles in scientific journals that allow the articles and supplementary materials to be made freely accessible in a public repository within six months of publication. This policy expands upon the current policy requiring HHMI investigators to share published research materials, databases, and software in a timely and useful manner.The new policy applies to all manuscripts submitted on or after January 1, 2008 where an HHMI investigator is the major author. What’s a major author? If the HHMI scientist is listed first or last on a paper, or is designated the corresponding author, than the HHMI investigator is considered the major author. However, HHMI strongly encourages all its investigators and collaborators, whether or not the major author, to comply with the public access policy.For those in the biomedical sciences, PubMedCentral (PMC) developed by NIH and the National Library of Medicine (NLM) is the designated free digital archive. If the article is in a journal outside biological sciences, then deposit must be made in a comparable repository within 6 months.To help authors with this process, HHMI has entered an agreement with Wiley Publishers for uploading manuscripts to PubMedCentral, paying Wiley a fee for each upload. This goes into effect as of October 1. In addition, the American Society of Hematology, publisher of Blood, has extended its open access option to HHMI authors as of October 1, 2007.
NIH Policy may become Mandatory
The other big development is the inclusion of language in the House and Senate bills for the 2008 NIH appropriations that would require the submission of research articles funded by NIH to PubMedCentral within 12 months after their appear in a journal. This would make the current NIH policy mandatory and sets the submission deadline of no later than 12 months after publication. Publishers have already started experimenting with NIH on submitting author manuscripts directly to PubMedCentral on behalf of researchers.
This has been a long awaited change to the NIH Public Access Policy. The Public Access Working Group and the NLM Board of Regents recommended mandatory submission over a year ago, and numerous library and consumer groups have been advocating for this language to be include in the NIH 2007 appropriations and reauthorization bills.
Watch this blog for more information when the final bill is passed and NIH issues its new policies and procedures.