By Act of Congress, all investigators who have been funded by the National Institutes of Health must submit an electronic version of their final, peer-reviewed manuscripts to the National Library of Medicine's PubMed Central.  This includes all articles arising from NIH funds that are accepted for publication in a journal on or after April 7, 2008.

To help advance science and improve human health, NIH Public Access Policy, Division G Title II, Section 218 of PL 110-161 ensures that the public will have access to the published results of NIH-funded research. 

The Policy requires that scientists submit final peer-reviewed journal manuscripts that arise from NIH funds to the digital archive PubMed Central upon acceptance for publication.

The Policy requires that these papers are accessible to the public on PubMed Central no later than 12 months after publication.

Most manuscripts can be submitted directly through the NIH Commons with your user ID and password.   Once logged in you will be able to upload your manuscript to the NIH Manuscript Submission System.  (See link under Quick Facts at http://publicaccess.nih.gov/)

Many publishers automatically make the final published version of every NIH-funded paper publicly available in PubMed Central no later than 12 months after publication, without author involvement.  (See link under Quick Facts at http://publicaccess.nih.gov/)

For those journals not listed in the NIH documents, you may access a sample letter to submit to a publisher that will ensure compliance with the NIH Public Access Policy.

See the full policy and complete information at http://publicaccess.nih.gov/

See also "Quick Facts about NIH Public Access" at http://www.bsu.edu/research/media/pdf/nih-public-access.pdf.

Please note also that the Policy mandates that all NIH applications submitted after May 25, 2008 must include the PubMed Central reference number when citing an article that falls under the policy.