NIH Public Access Policy

The NIH Public Access Policy applies to any manuscript that:

• Is peer-reviewed;
• And, is accepted for publication in a journal on or after April 7, 2008;
• And, arises from:
  • Any direct funding from an NIH grant or cooperative agreement active in Fiscal Year 2008 or beyond, or;
  • Any direct funding from an NIH contract signed on or after April 7, 2008, or;
  • Any direct funding from the NIH Intramural Program, or;
  • An NIH employee.

For more further information see the NIH Public Access Policy Details.

The NIH Public Access Policy Does NOT Apply to the Following:

• Books or Book Chapters
• Editorials
• Articles accepted for publication BEFORE April 7, 2008
• Articles resulting from work funded by sources other than NIH
• Other materials that are NOT peer-reviewed

For more further information see the NIH Public Access Policy Details and the Determine Applicability page.

If you don’t know the acceptance date

If you are trying to go back and ensure older articles are compliant, it can be difficult to determine when an article was accepted for publication and if the Policy applies to the paper.  Below are some strategies for figuring this out and what to do with the citation in My Bibliography.

If you have a copy of the journal agreement in your files or email from your publisher, check when your manuscript was ACCEPTED FOR PUBLICATION (not when it was submitted or when it was published)

If you cannot find the agreement, search for a copy of the article:

• Put PMID number into PubMed search box  (you can also use single citation matcher with author name, year, etc.)
• Make sure it is the correct citation
• Click on full text link
• View PDF version: likely locations for acceptance information are below abstract, at bottom of first page, after conclusion with author information, at the end of references, or occasionally in a box along the side of the first page; every journal is different.

Cannot find the acceptance date in the PDF of the article?

• Check the PubMed citation – use the PMID to search for the article, as above
• Change the Display setting (left hand side) to MEDLINE
• Scroll down towards bottom of data to the PHST field (publication history field)
• See if you find the PHST code and a listing of when article was submitted and accepted  for publication
  • DO NOT use the dates in EDAT, MHDA, CRDT fields, as these are the NLM processing dates
  • Example of correct fields to use:
    • PHST- 2008/01/03 [received]
    • PHST- 2008/04/17 [revised]
    • PHST- 2008/04/27 [accepted]