Important Information for University of Southern California Investigators Receiving Funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH)

Introduction:

In late 2007 as part of the 2008 Consolidated Appropriations Bill, President George W. Bush signed a law mandating the National Institutes of Health (NIH) make the results of NIH funded research available to the public. The NIH has issued a revised public access policy that requires all investigators funded by NIH to submit or have submitted for them an electronic copy of their final peer-reviewed manuscript to PubMed Central (PMC), a digital repository maintained by the National Library of Medicine that offers free access to its content to the general public. Investigators must submit publications within 12 months of publication.

Important Dates:

April 7, 2008

"As of April 7, 2008, all articles arising from NIH funds must be submitted to PubMed Central upon acceptance for publication." (NIH Public Access Policy)

May 25, 2008

"As of May 25, 2008, NIH applications, proposals, and progress reports must include the PubMed Central reference number when citing an article that falls under the policy and is authored or co-authored by the investigator, or arose from the investigator's NIH award. This policy includes applications submitted to the NIH for the May 25, 2008 due date and subsequent due dates." (NIH Public Access Policy)

Guidelines for USC Investigators

• The Principle Investigator (PI) is responsible for meeting this requirement.
• The PI continues to be free to select the journals in which they publish their research findings.
• Many journals will submit articles automatically to PubMed Central as a service to authors.
• When submitting an NIH funded article to a journal not on the PMC automatic article submission list, notify the journal that the article is subject to the NIH Access Policy at the time of submission, and verify that the copyright transfer or other publication agreement allows the article to be submitted to NIH in accordance with the Policy.
  
  
• • The NIH recommends the following language:
    
    "Journal acknowledges that Author retains the right to provide a copy of the final manuscript to the NIH upon acceptance for Journal publication, for public archiving in PubMed Central as soon as possible but no later than 12 months after publication by Journal."
  • SPARC/Science Commons/ARL recommends sending a cover letter with all new submissions and they have supplied the text of a sample letter. This letter is useful if you wish to have additional rights to your publications such as use in your course packs and access from personal and institutional Web sites.
  • If the rights have already been assigned to the publisher, the PI/author should write to the publisher requesting permission to upload a copy of the article to the NIH Manuscript Submission System. Sample text:
    
    "When I agreed to publication of my manuscript in your journal, I assigned cartain rights to you, the publisher. In order to comply with the NIH's Public Access Policy (Division G, Title II, Section 218 of PL 110-161 (Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2008), I am requesting permission to submit an electronic version of the final, peer-reviewed manuscript of to the NIH's Manuscript Submission System so that it will be made available through PubMed Central. Please reply in writing to me prior to the one year anniversary of the article's publication, so that I can comply with the NIH in a timely fashion."
  • If a PI is denied permission to upload an article to comply with the NIH regulation they should contact the University's Office of the General Counsel (213) 740-7922.
  • After publication the PI must upload the final version of the article NIH Manuscript Submission System which will in turn archive the article in PubMed Central.
  • In some cases, publishers will upload a copy of the manuscript version of the article to the NIH Manuscript Submission System but please approve the submission of the article at PubMed Central. Some publishers may charge for this service, but you can alternately load your original manuscript yourself without charge. Authors are required to go to the site and approve the submission of the articles to PubMed Central.
  • You can learn more about submitting manuscripts to the NIH by viewing the illustrated submission tutorials available on the NIHMS web site.
• Investigators should append the PubMed Central reference number to citations of articles that are the result of NIH sponsored research when submitting proposals, applications and status reports to the NIH. This is the PubMed Central reference number, not the PubMed ID. These numbers will help reviewers find relevant research in PubMed Central and related databases.

Benefits:

• The copy in PubMed Central will serve as the copy of record for the grant. Print copies will no longer be required as part of progress reports.
• Articles will be archived and preserved for posterity by the National Library of Medicine.
• Articles will have stable URLs which facilitate accurate citation.
• Articles deposited will be cross-indexed with other NCBI databases such as PubMed and GenBank.
• In addition to NCBI databases, content can be retrieved through public search engines such as Google, Google Scholar, Yahoo and Microsoft Academic Live.
• Articles will be available to researchers world-wide who can benefit from and cite these articles in their work.

How the USC Libraries Can Assist PIs

PubMed Central, ISI Web of Science and other similar online resources have alerting features that will notify PIs when their research is indexed if the PI has set up a profile. Librarians at the Norris Medical Library on the Health Sciences Campus, the Wilson Dental Library and Learning Center and at the Science and Engineering Library on the University Park Campus can assist in setting up these alerts. They can also assist PIs and their research assistants in finding PubMed and NIH reference numbers.

On the Health Sciences Campus please contact Pamela Corley (323) 442-1125 at the USC Norris Medical Library.

PIs from the School of Dentistry should contact the Wilson Dental Library, John Gluekert, director or call (213) 740-1439

At the University Park Campus' Science and Engineering Library please contact Jean Crampon (213) 740 4421, Alan Stevens or Norah Xiao.