Enhanced Public Access to NIH Research Information

["Hamaker, Chuck" <cahamake@email.uncc.edu>]

http://grants1.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-04-064.html
Posted  Friday sept. 3. 
Notice: Enhanced Public Access to NIH Research Information
Notice Number: NOT-OD-04-064

Key Dates
Release Date: September 3, 2004

Issued by
National Institutes of Health (NIH)

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is dedicated to improving the
health of Americans by conducting and funding biomedical research that
will help prevent, detect, treat and reduce the burdens of disease and
disability. In order to achieve these goals, it is essential to ensure
that scientific information arising from NIH-funded research is available
in a timely fashion to other scientists, health care providers, students,
teachers, and the many millions of Americans searching the web to obtain
credible health-related information. NIH's mission includes a
long-standing commitment to share and support public access to the results
and accomplishments of the activities that it funds.

Establishing a comprehensive, searchable electronic resource of NIH-
funded research results and providing free access to all, is perhaps the
most fundamental way to collect and disseminate this information. The NIH
must balance this need with the ability of journals and publishers to
preserve their critical role in the peer review, editing and scientific
quality control process. The economic and business implications of any
changes to the current paradigm must be considered as the NIH weighs
options to ensure public access to the results of studies funded with
public support without compromising the quality of the information being
provided. The NIH has established and intends to maintain a dialogue with
publishers, investigators, and representatives from scientific
associations and the public to ensure the success of this initiative.

This notice is to announce and to seek public comments regarding NIH's
plans to facilitate enhanced public access to NIH health related research
information. NIH intends to request that its grantees and supported
Principal Investigators provide the NIH with electronic copies of all
final version manuscripts upon acceptance for publication if the research
was supported in whole or in part by NIH funding. This would include all
research grants, cooperative agreements, contracts, as well as National
Research Service Award (NRSA) fellowships. We define final manuscript as
the author's version resulting after all modifications due to the peer
review process. Submission of the final manuscript will provide NIH
supported investigators with an alternate means by which they will meet
and fulfill the requirement of the provision of one copy of each
publication in the annual or final progress reports. Submission of the
electronic versions of final manuscripts will be monitored as part of the
annual grant progress review and close-out process.

NIH considers final manuscripts to be an important record of the research
funded by the government and will archive these manuscripts and any
appropriate supplementary information in PubMed Central (PMC), NIH's
digital repository for biomedical research. Six months after an NIH
supported research study's publication-or sooner if the publisher
agrees-the manuscript will be made available freely to the public through
PMC. If the publisher requests, the author's final version of the
publication will be replaced in the PMC archive by the final publisher's
copy with an appropriate link to the publisher's electronic database.

As with NIH's DNA sequence and genetics databases, this digital archive in
PMC is expected to be fully searchable to enhance retrieval and can be
shared with other international digital repositories to maximize archiving
and to provide widespread access to this information. It is anticipated
that investigators applying for new and competing renewal support from the
NIH will utilize this resource by providing links in their applications to
their PubMed archived information. This practice will increase the
efficiency of the application and review process.

NIH trusts that the up to six month delay to public archiving in PMC
recommended by the policy will not result in unreasonable or
disproportionate charges to grantees. As with all other costs, NIH expects
its grantees to be careful stewards of Federal funds and to carefully
manage these resources. We will carefully monitor requested budgets and
other costing information and would consider options to ensure that
grantees' budgets are not unduly affected by this policy.

Comments

The NIH encourages comments concerning its intentions to enhance public
access to NIH-funded health related research information as outlined in
this notice. Comments on short term impacts and suggestions for mitigating
these are especially welcome. We encourage that all comments be directed
to the following NIH website:
http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/public_access/add.htm.

As an alternative, comments may be submitted by email to the following
address: PublicAccess@nih.gov

Comments must be received within 60 days of publication of this notice.
NIH intends to publish an identical notice in the Federal Register

Chuck Hamaker
Associate University Librarian Collections and Technical Services
Atkins Library
University of North Carolina Charlotte
Charlotte, NC 28223
phone 704 687-2825