The obligation to deposit articles stemming from NIH-funded research in PubMed Central is a condition of all grants and cooperative agreements active in FY 2008 or beyond and for all contracts awarded after April 7, 2008.

To comply with this requirement, authors must retain the right to deposit the work in PubMed Central. That means authors must exercise care when they are presented with any agreement by the journal that is to publish their article as changes to the agreement may be necessary. It may even be desirable to investigate a journal’s policies before submitting a manuscript.

When articles are accepted for publication in journals, it is common practice for the publisher to ask the author to sign an agreement concerning his or her copyright. The terms of these agreements vary widely from publisher to publisher. Authors should read all such agreements carefully before signing to ensure PubMed Central deposit is permitted. In many cases, a publisher’s standard agreement prohibits public availability such as PubMed Central will offer. However, alert authors can make changes to publisher agreements that let them retain the rights they need to comply with the NIH policy. The Sherpa/Romeo Publisher copyright policies database can often help ascertain the publisher’s policy before manuscript submission. The University of Rochester Health Sciences Library has a helpful guide to publisher policies.

Using Author-Publisher Agreements

An institution as grantee has a distinct obligation to grant NIH copyright permission to make the manuscript publicly accessible through PMC not later than 12 months after the date of publication. This obligation is connected to manuscript submission because the author, or the person submitting the manuscript on the author’s behalf, must have the necessary rights under copyright at the time of submission to give NIH the copyright permission it requires. Institutions should be aware that there are multiple strategies they can pursue to ensure necessary copyright permissions are retained. A joint SPARC/Creative Commons/ARL joint white paper, "Complying with the NIH Public Access Policy - Copyright Considerations and Options" explains and analyzes the scope of the grantee’s copyright-related obligations under the revised Public Access Policy and suggests six options for compliance with that aspect of the grantee’s obligation.

If an institution's strategy involves expecting authors to personally manage their publisher agreements, it is recommended that authors be made aware that if a journal presents them with a copyright transfer agreement, they need not use the form as presented. If the agreement does not permit PubMed Central deposit (a disciplinary repository)—or if the author is unsure—it is recommended that the author add language that adapts the agreement and allows compliance with the NIH requirement.

NIH has suggested the following language for insertion into publishing agreements to retain the limited rights necessary for PubMed Central deposit:

Journal acknowledges that Author retains the right to provide a copy of the final manuscript to the NIH upon acceptance for Journal publication, for public archiving in PubMed Central as soon as possible but no later than 12 months after publication by Journal.

However, this language does not reserve their right to copy the article for use in their teaching and research, to build on the article in future publications, or to make the article available on a personal Web site or in a disciplinary or institutional digital archive.

An option that retains additional rights is to use the SPARC Access-Reuse Author Addendum or one of the other addenda available via the Scholars Copyright Addendum Engine. Each of these specifies a broader but reasonable bundle of rights to be retained by the author. Many institutions already have and others may choose to develop their own specially tailored addendum and/or a publisher notification letter for use by their faculty. For example, MIT Libraries offers an MIT amendment tool. Duke University offers language for a submission letter as well.

Institutional Policies Covering All Researchers

Some institutions may wish to adopt policies that reserve the institution’s right to make articles written by their faculty members available in open repositories. (For example, see news of such a step by the Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences). An institutional policy that reserves some rights in all faculty and staff works could mean that individuals do not need to change publisher agreements to maintain their ability to comply with the NIH policy or to make other uses of their works.

Read the joint white paper for university administrators, which discusses six strategies for ensuring institutions reserve the necessary rights for articles to be made available in PubMed Central.

Publisher-Deposit Services

Some publishers have special agreements with NIH to deposit all published articles in PubMed Central, for public availability within 12 months of publication. If publishing in one of these journals (NIH maintains a list), investigators do not need to submit any files to PubMed Central to fulfill the requirements of the NIH Public Access Policy or make any changes to any rights agreements. However, NIH will ask them to provide the associated award information

Some publishers, while not participating in full PubMed Central deposit, will submit copies of manuscripts to NIH, obviating the need to change rights agreements. Publishers may charge a fee for this service or may bundle it with other fee-based services such as immediate open access to the article on the publisher’s Web site. Even where a publisher makes the deposit, the investigator will be contacted to review and approve the submitted article if the publisher submits their final manuscript rather than the publisher's version of the article.