Did you know that the ITM’s Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) is awarded by the National Center for Advancing Translational Science (NCATS), one of the 27 institutes and centers at the NIH? This means that any publications resulting from research supported by ITM-funded services must comply with the NIH Public Access Policy.
What is the NIH Public Access Policy?
The NIH Public Access Policy resulted from Congressional legislation designed to ensure that the public has access to the published results of NIH-funded research.
The NIH Public Access Policy applies to manuscripts published after April 1, 2008, and requires all peer-reviewed publications arising from NIH-funded research to be submitted to the digital archive PubMed Central upon acceptance for publication. To help advance science and improve human health, the policy requires that manuscripts are accessible to the public on PubMed Central no later than
12 months after publication.
But isn’t this automatically taken care of when I publish in a major journal?
No. While some journals do send published papers to PubMed Central, this is often done only after the publisher’s embargo ends, which can be well after the NIH’s maximum 12-month time frame. Some publishers never make their published papers available at no cost. However, investigators can circumvent lengthy publication embargoes and comply with the NIH Public Access Policy by uploading the final, peer-reviewed, pre-publication version of their manuscript directly to PubMed Central. This upload process is simple and requires no more than 10 minutes.
How do I ensure compliance with the policy?
Investigators can check publication compliance status for all of their published papers by logging in to My NCBI and using the My Bibliography tool. This My Bibliography tool will allow users to import publications directly from PubMed Central into a bibliography of their authored papers. Click here to learn more about My NCBI.
You can also find step-by-step instructions on how to check your publication compliance status here.
The entire process of obtaining NIH Public Access compliance, beginning with uploading the accepted version of your manuscript (not the publisher’s printed version) to PubMed Central and ending with your manuscript being assigned a PubMed Central Identification Number (PMCID), takes approximately one month. Within 7 to 10 days of uploading your manuscript to PubMed Central, you should receive by email a National Institutes of Health Manuscript Submission Identification Number (NIHMSID), which indicates that your manuscript is in the process of becoming fully NIH Public Access compliant.
What could happen if my publications aren’t compliant with or in process of becoming compliant with NIH Public Access Policy?
- Effective July 1, 2013, NIH will delay processing continuation of an award (potentially including the UChicago CTSA) if publications arising from it are not in compliance.
- You will not be able to cite your non-compliant publications as “prior studies” in future grant applications.
- You will not be able to cite your non-compliant publications in a progress report.
For more information, or for questions regarding NIH Public Access Policy compliance, contact Michael Quinn, PhD, ITM Evaluation and Tracking Manager, at mquinn@medicine.bsd.uchicago.edu.
