To help advance science and improve human health, he NIH Public Access Policy requires scientists to submit journal articles that arise from NIH-funded projects to its digital archive, PubMed Central, upon acceptance for publication.
Eligibility Requirements
This policy applies if your peer-reviewed article is based on work (in whole or in part) and arises from:
- Any funding from an NIH grant or cooperative agreement active in Fiscal Year 2008 or beyond.
- Direct funding from a contract signed on or after April 7, 2008.
- Direct funding from the NIH Intramural Program.
- Employment by the NIH.
Compliance with the policy is mandatory and affects three areas:
- Copyright agreements with publishers: Authors should review the publication agreement (or similar copyright transfer agreement) to ensure it allows the paper to be posted to PubMed Central.
- Submitting the article to NIH: Follow one of four possible methods to submit the paper to PubMed Central.
- Citations in applications and articles sent to NIH: All applications or reports to NIH must include the PMC reference number when citing applicable papers.
Failure to comply with this statutory requirement will delay the processing of NIH continuation funding as well as future awards.
UWM Digital Commons
Once your article is publicly available through PubMed Central, you are also encouraged to submit it to the UWM Digital Commons. This service from the UWM Libraries is a virtual showcase for UWM‘s research and creative profiles. Members of the UWM academic community are encouraged to contribute any completed scholarship for long-term preservation and worldwide electronic accessibility. Content may include:
- Research papers and reports
- Pre-prints and post-prints
- Datasets and other primary research materials
- Learning objects
- Theses
- Student projects
- Conference papers and presentations
- Other born-digital or digitized research and instructional materials
UWM Digital Commons is indexed by Google Scholar and other specialty academic search engines. For more information, contact Tim Gritten, Assistant Director of Libraries for User Services.