Complying With the National Institutes of Health Public Access Policy to Facilitate Science Availability for All

Abstract

Social work researchers are making significant advances in science funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to improve the health of underserved and marginalized populations throughout the world. Unfortunately, research results are often only available to other scientists at academic institutions, limiting their impact. To facilitate the dissemination of science to the public who paid for it, NIH has implemented a mandatory Public Access Policy that requires articles supported by NIH funds to be deposited in the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed Central within 12 months of publication. Funding for investigators who do not adhere to this policy is being actively delayed and withheld until they are in compliance. This article describes how to comply with the new Public Access Policy for social work researchers funded by NIH, with an emphasis on articles accepted and published in Research on Social Work Practice.

Keywords

mental health field of practice

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the primary funder of biomedical research and development in the United States. Since 2010, NIH has funded approximately 12,000 grants per year, costing 11 billion dollars annually, to conduct science projects designed to understand disease and improve the health of the nation. These projects produce a large number of results published in peer-review journals that are often only available to academic institutions or for individual purchase at high cost. The lack of access to research results has, in part, led to considerable difficulties in diffusing NIH-funded advances outside academic settings, and many have seen the need for focused efforts to diffuse science to the public (see Kerner & Hall, 2009; Proctor et al., 2009 for reviews). Observing that current policies did not support general access to research findings funded with public tax dollars, in 2008, the NIH implemented a mandatory Public Access Policy requiring that all peer-review articles resulting from NIH-funded research be deposited in the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed Central (PMC) within 12 months of publication (NIH, 2008). This policy applies to peer-reviewed journal articles that were the direct result of scientific aims funded by NIH, to secondary data analyses where original data collection was funded in part or wholly by NIH, and to results that may not have been NIH-funded studies but for which one or more of the authors received NIH support to write the article as is often the case for investigators with career development awards or centers. In 2013, this policy gained real teeth, when NIH began withholding noncompeting continuation awards (out years in already funded projects) for any post-2008 publication that is at variance with this policy (NIH, 2012).

Journals and publishers have generally responded to the Public Access Policy requirement in two ways. The first involves the publisher automatically depositing the final non-typeset version of the manuscript at PMC for authors indicating NIH funding on submission. This method is fairly seamless and requires little instruction to comply with NIH Public Access Policy, beyond review and approval of the deposited manuscript by the corresponding author and/or Principal Investigator. However, publishers are not required to deposit accepted manuscripts, as the access policy applies to scientists and not publishers, and many journals do not have a system in place for implementing this method. The second approach, which Research on Social Work Practice (RSWP) uses, relies on authors dutifully submitting their prepublication accepted manuscript to PMC personally. This article provides a brief tutorial on the second approach and how to comply with the Public Access Policy for NIH-funded social work researchers who publish their articles in RSWP.

Requirements of the NIH Public Access Policy

As outlined in the 2008 NIH notice NOT-OD-08-033, “Revised Policy on Enhancing Public Access to Archived Publications Resulting from NIH-Funded Research,” the Public Access Policy written into Public Law 110-161 is as follows:

The Director of the National Institutes of Health (“NIH”) shall require in the current fiscal year and thereafter that all investigators funded by the NIH submit or have submitted for them to the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed Central an electronic version of their final, peer-reviewed manuscripts upon acceptance for publication, to be made publicly available no later than 12 months after the official date of publication: Provided, that the NIH shall implement the public access policy in a manner consistent with copyright law (NIH, 2008, p. 1).

This policy became permanent in 2009 with the passing of Public Law 111-8. Specific requirements of this policy detailed in NOT-OD-08-033 are that:

1. The NIH Public Access Policy applies to all peer-reviewed articles that arise, in whole or in part, from direct costs funded by NIH, or from NIH staff, that are accepted for publication on or after April 7, 2008.

2. Institutions and investigators are responsible for ensuring that any publishing or copyright agreements concerning submitted articles fully comply with this Policy.

3. PubMed Central (PMC) is the NIH digital archive of full-text, peer-reviewed journal articles. Its content is publicly accessible and integrated with other databases (see: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov).

4. The final, peer-reviewed manuscript includes all graphics and supplemental materials that are associated with the article.

5. Beginning May 25, 2008, anyone submitting an application, proposal, or progress report to the NIH must include the PMC or NIH Manuscript Submission reference number when citing applicable articles that arise from their NIH funded research. This policy includes applications submitted to the NIH for the May 25, 2008 due date and subsequent due dates (NIH, 2008, pp. 1–2).

Consequently, any article published in RSWP that is generated with NIH support must be deposited to PMC for authors to submit an NIH grant proposal for new funding or progress report for continued funding. Journal articles that are not generated from NIH support are not subject to this policy but can be submitted to PMC as long as a formal agreement has been established with the journal as is the case with RSWP.

Submitting Your Accepted Manuscript to PMC

Table 1 outlines the steps involved in submitting an accepted RSWP manuscript to PMC in accordance with Sage Publications copyright policy (Sage Publications, n.d.). The first and most important step for avoiding violations in copyright regulations is to locate the final word-processing version of your manuscript. Many journals have for years allowed a self-archiving policy for authors as long as the archived version that is made available to the public is the pre-typeset final manuscript. On the cover page of the manuscript a note should be appended indicating that the final published version is available at the appropriate reference location. PubMed Central recognizes this widely accepted policy and usually only accepts pre-typeset manuscripts to comply with copyright law.

Table 1.

Steps for Submitting Accepted Research on Social Work Practice Articles to PubMed Central.

Step	Description
1. Locate your accepted manuscript	Obtain the final version of the accepted, non-typeset manuscript from your personal files. This is usually the word processing document in which you wrote your manuscript. Many document types are accepted, including Word and PDF, but not LaTeX.
2. Login to NIHMS	Current location: http://nihms.nih.gov Investigators can use the same eRA Commons credentials used to submit grant applications and progress reports. Once logged in choose to submit a new manuscript.
3. Enter appropriate journal and article information	Investigators can lookup already published manuscripts that may be out of compliance on PubMed Central or manually enter their article information
4. Select the grants that supported the study and/or article	Grant information for the investigator will automatically be populated for selection. If another investigator is the contact or principal investigator, search for her/him and select the appropriate grant. You will still be allowed to manage depositing the manuscript.
5. Upload your manuscript	Include your manuscript file and all figures, tables, and supplemental materials located in Step 1. Label figures and tables as “Fig. 1” and “Table 1” etc.… Tables can be easily included in the main manuscript. It is helpful for NIH staff if figures are uploaded separately.
6. Review and approve	Review the summary information, associated grants, and PDF built to ensure everything is corrected before submission.
7. Select a reviewer	Choose who should review the official PubMed Central version once it is processed, formatted, and ready to be published online. This should most often be the corresponding author or principal investigator and must be an author of the manuscript.
8. Select a release delay/embargo	Select 12 months. Sage Publications allows the release of your article to the public on PubMed Central using a 12-month delay only and not sooner.
9. Approve web version when available	Your manuscript has been submitted to NIH staff. They will review it, make sure everything is acceptable, and produce a final full-text web version for your approval within several weeks to several months. The process is not complete until you approve this web version.
10. Report your NIHMSID to NIH as necessary	NIH accepts pending PubMed Central submissions as being in compliance with the Public Access Policy once an NIHMSID is assigned by completing Steps 1–8. This can be used to quickly show compliance in progress reports and new submissions for relevant manuscripts that have not yet received a PMCID. PMCIDs are usually only available after journal publication.

Note. PMCID = PubMed Central Identifier; NIHMS = NIH Manuscript Submission System; NIHMSID = NIH Manuscript Submission System Identifier. Additional details on the NIH Public Access Policy can be found at http://publicaccess.nih.gov.

Once locating the final word-processing version of your manuscript, authors should login to the National Institutes of Health Manuscript Submission (NIHMS; http://nihms.nih.gov) system. NIH grantees will need their electronic Research Administration (eRA) Commons login credentials that are the same credentials as those used to submit grant applications and progress reports. In the unusual case that you do not have an eRA Commons account, such as with student submissions of funded projects, an account will need to be requested through your institution. After logging in to NIHMS, submit a new manuscript and enter the article and journal information of where it will be ultimately published. If the article is already published and the journal is indexed in PubMed (RSWP is in the index), you can search for it and prepopulate many of the fields automatically. Most of the time, the article will not have been already published and thus you will have to enter the article and journal information manually. Next, select grants that have directly contributed to the article, either by funding the project itself or investigator time to write the article. Current and previously held grants by the submitter will automatically be available for selection. If other principal investigators have funding that contributed to the article, you can search and select those individuals; you will maintain control over the submission process and the other investigators will be notified. After selecting grants associated with the article, upload the word-processing version of the final manuscript with figures attached separately and review and approve the PDF that is generated.

Finally, after uploading your manuscript materials, you will be asked to select who will review the web version that will be available to the public. The person selected should often be yourself but may also be one of the contact principal investigators for the grants associated with the article. In addition, you will be asked to select a release delay or embargo. Sage Publications policy for an acceptable embargo is 12 months (Sage Publications, n.d.), which is the most common. Other journals allow for a 6-month embargo. Regardless of the release delay selected, it is recommended that authors check the box that allows internal NIH program staff (including Program Officers) to view the manuscript immediately so that they have access to your work as quickly as possible. Selecting a release delay will conclude the submission process and your manuscript files will go to NIH for review. A web-based PMC version of your article will be generated within several weeks to several months. Be careful to watch out for correspondence from NIH regarding any additional information that may be needed, and it is important to review and approve the draft web version they prepare quickly, as your article will not be published in PMC or in compliance with NIH Public Access Policy until you have approved the final web version.

Once the final web version is approved, your manuscript will receive a PMC Identifier (PMCID; not a PubMed Identifier [PMID]), which will document its free availability in PMC and your adherence to the Public Access Policy. National Institutes of Health Manuscript Submission Identifiers (NIHMSID) and PMCIDs are the two critical identifiers generated from this process, with an NIHMSID being assigned immediately upon submission and a final PMCID assigned once NIH review is complete and the author approves the PMC version of the manuscript. A PMID is an identifier for abstracts indexed by PubMed (not PMC) and is not indicative of adherence to the NIH Public Access Policy. Since it can take NIH several months to generate the web version of your article, in the meantime, you can show compliance with the Public Access Policy by reporting your NIHMSID in biographical sketches and progress reports. Currently, NIH will accept an NIHMSID in place of a PMCID for up to 90 days after the publication of the article (NIH, 2009).

Differences From Open Access (OA)

The NIH Public Access Policy requiring submission of NIH-funded articles is different from OA. OA is an increasingly available option for authors to make their article freely available to the public on the journal’s website. The terms vary widely by journal, but authors are often able to retain some copyright ownership over their work (Laakso et al., 2011). Most journals, however, require that authors pay a processing fee (typically from US$1,000 to US$3,000) to publish OA. In exchange, the journal typesets the article as usual and makes it available free of charge to the public in an integrated fashion with the rest of the non-OA articles in the volume and/or issue in which it is published. While OA is a significant advance in scientific publishing for making research results widely available to the public, it does not guarantee compliance with the NIH Public Access Policy. The critical issue is whether the journal publisher deposits your article in PMC during the process of making it OA. For example, the OA program at Sage Publications, Sage Choice, will for a fee (US$1,500 for RSWP) make your article freely available on the journal website to the public and will automatically deposit the appropriate version of your manuscript in PMC for processing, eliminating the need for Steps 1–8 in Table 1. Since Sage Choice automatically submits your manuscript to PMC, it is an example of an OA program that adheres to the NIH Public Access Policy. However, not all OA programs submit your manuscript to PMC, and therefore, simply purchasing OA does not guarantee compliance with the Public Access Policy. It is also important to remember that purchasing OA is not required to adhere to the NIH policy, as all the steps involved in PMC submissions are freely available to authors who handle the submission process themselves.

Conclusions

Social work researchers are making vast strides in advancing science to improve the health of the nation and reduce disparities among those who are most vulnerable. NIH funding has been a critical component to these advances, and the results of our efforts must be made available to the public who paid for them and the people who could benefit from them the most, if our research is ever to change practice. To facilitate the uptake of research findings, the NIH has implemented a mandatory Public Access Policy, requiring that all articles supported by NIH funds be submitted to the National Library of Medicine’s PMC immediately upon acceptance and available to the public no later than 12 months after publication. Adhering to this policy is not only a requirement for continued funding and success in obtaining NIH support for social work research but is also consistent with the values and ethics of our profession that seeks, in part, to produce science that will be broadly used to improve the lives of marginalized and underserved populations.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Preparation of this manuscript was supported by NIH grant K23 MH-95783.

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