For immediate release:
April 1, 2008
For more information, contact:
Karla Hahn
Association of Research Libraries
202-296-2296
karla@arl.org
Washington DC—In a preprint article published online by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), Duke University Scholarly Communications Officer Kevin L. Smith offers pragmatic strategies that authors and their institutions can use to manage authors’ copyrights to fulfill the requirements of the new National Institutes of Health (NIH) Public Access Policy.
Effective April 7, 2008, the new NIH Public Access Policy will require that all investigators funded by NIH submit an electronic copy of their final peer-reviewed manuscripts of articles that have been accepted for publication. Submission is to take place “upon acceptance,” and the article must be made available in the PubMed Central database within one year of publication.
Smith explores three strategic options for authors and institutions to retain and manage the rights needed to comply with the new policy. Although the three strategies are focused on meeting the NIH’s article deposit requirement, they could also be employed to accomplish a more comprehensive strategy for public dissemination of research.
Additionally, Smith includes a sample letter that authors can use to notify publishers that an article they are submitting for consideration is based on NIH-funded research and therefore must be made accessible to the public under NIH’s new policy.
See the ARL Web site for the preprint article, Kevin L. Smith, “Managing Copyright for NIH Public Access: Strategies to Ensure Compliance,” ARL: A Bimonthly Report, no. 258 (June 2008), http://www.arl.org/resources/pubs/br/br258.shtml.
The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is a nonprofit organization of 123 research libraries in North America. Its mission is to influence the changing environment of scholarly communication and the public policies that affect research libraries and the diverse communities they serve. ARL pursues this mission by advancing the goals of its member research libraries, providing leadership in public and information policy to the scholarly and higher education communities, fostering the exchange of ideas and expertise, and shaping a future environment that leverages its interests with those of allied organizations. ARL is on the Web at http://www.arl.org/.