From GrantWeek: NIH Announces New Public Access Policy Tools

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has warned that, beginning in spring 2013, researchers who are not in compliance with the NIH public access policy will face delayed processing of their non-competing continuation grant awards. Since 2008, compliance with the NIH public access policy has been a statutory requirement and a term and condition of all grant awards and cooperative agreements. Awardees are required to submit final peer-reviewed journal manuscripts, as soon as they are accepted for publication, to the digital archive PubMed Central. The goal is that all research results arising from NIH-funded projects will be accessible to the public within 12 months of publication.

NIH has conducted a great deal of outreach to assist applicants with understanding the policy. In light of ongoing non-compliance issues, the agency has made changes to My NCBI. One update improves the workflow and communication between project directors/principal investigators (PDs/PIs) and other authors to answer the challenge of tracking all papers arising from NIH awards, even if the PD/PI is not the author.

Additional information on using My NCBI is available online:

• Get Started with My NCBI; 
• Manage Compliance with the NIH Public Access Policy;
• Use a Delegate to Help manage Your NCBI Account; and
• Use My NCBI to Associate Your Papers with Your PI’s Award.

Institutions are encouraged to continue providing training and other support to NIH awardees. Direct specific questions to PublicAccess@nih.gov.