Schizophrenia Bulletin and the Revised NIH Public Access Policy

Paul D. Shepard1,2

2Department of Psychiatry, University of Maryland School ofMedicine and the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center, Mapleand Locust Streets, Baltimore, MD 21228

Limited public access to published findings stemmingfrom National Institutes of Health (NIH)–funded re-search, together with a failed attempt to remedy thesituation voluntarily, has resulted in a congressionalmandate that is sending investigators, universities, andacademic publishers scrambling to comply with a newlaw that is flashing real teeth. Effective April 7, 2008,all peer-reviewed scientific articles based on research sup-ported by the NIH must be freely accessible in PubMedCentral within 12 months of their official date of publi-cation.1 Not to be confused with PubMed, the popularMEDLINE search engine, PubMed Central is theNational Library ofMedicine’s (NLM) digital repositoryof full text biomedical and life sciences literature. Com-pliance with the revised NIH Public Access Policy, whichwas passed as part of the Consolidated AppropriationsAct of 2008, is a statutory requirement and conditionof all current Public Health Service grant awards. Ulti-mate responsibility for ensuring that the appropriate ma-terial is deposited in PubMed Central rests with theprincipal investigator (PI) of the sponsored research,even if the PI is not an author on the publication. Thisis because, effectiveMay 25, 2008, individuals submittingNIH proposals, applications, or progress reports must in-clude a unique PubMed Central (PMCID) or NIHMan-uscript Submission (NIHMSID) reference number whenciting published work arising from their NIH-funded re-search. The former is supplied by PubMed Central uponcompletion of the deposit, while the latter is provided asan interim identifier by the NIH Manuscript Submission(NIHMS) system, the portal used to upload manuscriptsto the NLM’s digital archive.2 Material that must be sub-mitted includes the accepted final peer-reviewed manu-script and associated files, including figures, tables,and all supplementary material. Specific instructions re-garding acceptable file formats and related procedural

issues on the use of the NIHMS system are availableat the NIH Public Access Web site.3

Individuals or agencies acting on behalf of NIH-funded investigators are permitted to upload the requiredmaterial to PubMed Central; however, only the PI of thedesignated funding source may approve the submissionand provide the necessary affirmation that the depositdoes not violate attendant copyright or licensing agree-ments. A number of journals, including the Journal ofNeuroscience,4 Proceedings of the National Academy ofSciences,5 andCell 6 have agreed to automatically depositthe required material into PubMed Central as a service totheir authors. A list of journals that have elected to pro-vide the final published version of all articles arising fromNIH-funded research without author involvement isavailable online7 and is updated periodically.As part of the agreement that transferred the operation

of Schizophrenia Bulletin from the National Institute ofMental Health to its new home, the University of Mary-land/Maryland Psychiatric Research Center and OxfordUniversity Press offered to ‘‘provide free access, viaPubMed Central and the journal Web site, to all articlespublished, beginning with the January 2005 issue, within12 months of the date of publication’’. In accordancewith this agreement, Oxford University Press publishesthe following statement on their Web site8:

NIH grantees should note that Oxford University Press au-tomatically deposits all Schizophrenia Bulletin articles inPubMed Central, where they are made freely available 12months after online publication in the journal. This meansthat publishing in the journal is fully compliant with the newNational Institute of Health (NIH) Public Access policy anda separate submission to the NIHMS system is not necessaryfor Schizophrenia Bulletin authors (see http://nihms.nih.gov/faq.html for confirmation of this).

As awareness of the revised (ie, mandatory) NIH Pub-lic Access Policy has grown, several contributors toSchizophrenia Bulletin have noticed that although articlesare made freely available on the journal’s Web site 12months after publication, the same material has yet toappear in PubMed Central. The editorial office is work-ing with representatives at Oxford University Press to en-sure that this issue is resolved in a timely fashion and thatauthors are kept informed of our progress. Until such

1 To whom correspondence should be addressed; tel: 410-402-7753, fax: 410-402-6066, e-mail: pshepard@mprc.umaryland.edu.

Schizophrenia Bulletin vol. 34 no. 5 pp. 799–800, 2008doi:10.1093/schbul/sbn086Advance Access publication on July 21, 2008

� 2008 The AuthorsThis is anOpenAccess article distributed under the terms of theCreativeCommonsAttributionNon-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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time as Oxford and PubMed Central reach an agreementregarding the format of publisher-supplied manuscripts,authors and PIs of sponsored research articles appearingin Schizophrenia Bulletin are strongly encouraged to de-posit the final, peer-reviewed copy of their manuscripts inPubMed Central as soon as they appear in the AdvanceAccess area of the journal’s Web site.9 Be advised that theterms of theSchizophrenia BulletinLicense to Publish agree-ment stipulate that manuscripts accepted for publicationcannot be made publicly available until 12 months afterthe date of online publication. The option to embargo ma-terial deposited in PubMed Central for up to 12 months isprovided during the late stages of the manuscript submis-sion procedure.

Despite a sluggish start to a process that is now man-dated by law, there is widespread support among researchinstitutions and academic libraries for the revised NIHPublic Access Policy.10 Patients, family members, andthe grassroots organizations supporting them will enjoyunprecedented access to the primary scientific literaturewhile researchers will benefit from the increased visibilityof their work. Archiving the written results of NIH-funded biomedical research, estimated at upwards of80 000 new manuscripts yearly, in a permanent, univer-sally accessible and searchable archive is also likely to cre-ate significant new opportunities for the development ofvalue-added services based on data mining technologies.While the advantages of increased public access to pub-licly funded science seem incontrovertible, NIH-fundedscientists will, at least in the short term, bear the bruntof the effort needed tomake the plan work. By permittingpublishers to directly deposit material into PubMed Cen-tral while insisting that authors and investigators remainactive participants in the process, the NIH has created

a system in which journals can partner with authors inushering in this new era of information sharing. We sin-cerely hope that our colleagues will regard this as an op-portunity rather than an annoyance.

References

1. National Institutes of Health. Revised Policy on EnhancingPublic Access to Archived Publications Resulting fromNIH-Funded Research. http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-08-033.html. Accessed June 16, 2008.

2. NIH Public Access. NIH Manucsript Submission System.http://www.nihms.nih.gov/. Accessed June 16, 2008.

3. National Institutes of Health. National Institutes of Health Pub-lic Access. http://publicaccess.nih.gov/. Accessed June 16, 2008.

4. Maunsell J. The NIH Public Access Policy. J Neurosci. 2008;28:4109.

5. Cozzarelli NR. Making research accessible: National Insti-tutes of Health (NIH) public access and PNAS open accesspolicies. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2005;102:5303.

6. Cell Press. National Institutes of Health Public Access Policy.http://www.cellpress.com/misc/page?page=nihpage. AccessedJune 16, 2008.

7. National Institutes of Health Public Access. Journals ThatSubmit Final Published Articles to PubMed Central. http://publicaccess.nih.gov/submit_process_journals.htm. AccessedJune 16, 2008.

8. Oxford Journals. Author Self-Archiving Policy. http://www.oxfordjournals.org/access_purchase/self-archiving_policyd.html. Accessed June 16, 2008.

9. Schizophrenia Bulletin. Advance Access. http://schizophreniabulletin.oxfordjournals.org/papbyrecent.dtl.Accessed June 16, 2008.

10. Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition.Support forNational InstitutesofHealth (NIH) implementationof the revised public access policy. http://www.arl.org/sparc/bm;doc/sparc-nih-pa-rfi-final.pdf. Accessed June 16, 2008.

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