Mandate for NIH-funded research papers

The following is important information regarding the new policy on research funded by the National Institutes of Health:

PL 110-161 Sec. 218 sets forth a new NIH Public Access Policy

The Director of the National Institutes of Health shall require 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.

PubMed Central is an online database of full-text biomedical journal articles created and maintained by the National Library of Medicine, freely available to the public at no charge, and available through the Walden Library. The thought behind this recent legislation is that since taxpayers fund this research, it should be freely available to taxpayers.

If you receive funding from the NIH you need to be aware of this new policy. Please see http://publicaccess.nih.gov for a detailed explanation of who must file and how.