With effect from April 7th 2008, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) Public Access Policy requires all peer-reviewed articles resulting from research carried out with NIH funding to be deposited in the PubMed Central archive, and to be made freely available within at most 12 months of publication.

If you are an NIH grantee or employee, publishing in one of BioMed Central’s 180+ open access journals is an easy and effective way to ensure automatic and optimal compliance with the NIH’s policy.

Benefits for NIH-funded researchers of publishing in one of BioMed Central’s open access journals

• All peer-reviewed research articles published by BioMed Central are automatically deposited in PubMed Central
• The official final version of the article is made freely available with no delay or embargo period
• Articles published in BioMed Central journals provide true open access thanks to an open access license agreement which allows (and encourages) re-distribution and re-use.

Inconveniences for NIH-funded authors when publishing in a subscription-only journal

• The author will generally be required to manually deposit a pre-publication manuscript version of their article in PubMed Central.
• The
  article must then go through a separate markup, layout and checking
  process, resulting in two versions of the article, an "official"
  Publisher version and an "unofficial" PubMed Central version
• The
  article will not be freely available during the embargo period
  following publication (typically 12 months), yet this is the very time
  when the article is of most interest to other researchers
• Exclusive
  rights to article generally remain with the publisher and so, even when
  the embargo is lifted, re-distribution and re-use remain prohibited.

Given these advantages, publishing in one of BioMed Central’s open
access journal’s is a natural choice for NIH-funded researchers.
Automatic deposit means you can spend less time depositing your
article, and more time on carrying out your research, and immediate
open access to the official published version ensures maximum
visibility for your research.

Submitting your research to one of BioMed Central’s peer reviewed
open access journals is easy – find out more by following the link
below:

How can I submit a manuscript to a BioMed Central journal?