The NIH Public Access Policy ensures that the public has access to the published results of NIH funded research. As of April 7, 2008 this policy requires that the final peer-reviewed and accepted version of the author’s manuscript of any research resulting from NIH-funded activities must be submitted to the PubMed Central (PMC) repository. The PMC record and the author’s final version of the manuscript should be made available to the public within 12 months of the definitive version of the article being published.

Cambridge University Press, the publisher of JINS, is in compliance with the NIH policy. The copyright transfer agreements in place, allow the final version of the accepted manuscript to be posted on PMC and for the record to be made publically available immediately, as long as the record contains a full reference to the Journal. The reference should be updated to include full citation details upon full publication and include a link to the online article. In addition, the definitive edited and published version of the article (i.e. that which appears on the journal website or in print) can be added to the PMC record no sooner than 12 months after publication, again with a full citation to the article and link. By allowing the author’s own version of the final accepted manuscript to be posted on PMC with no embargo limitation, Cambridge University Press and JINS are entirely in compliance with the NIH requirement. The NIH does not state that access to the definitive published version is a requirement, so this is an addition benefit. The 12 month maximum embargo stipulated by NIH is for the author’s final peer-reviewed and accepted manuscript. With respect to the date of publication, an article is considered published when it is posted online. At this time JINS is published on an issue-by-issue basis and the publication date is when the issue is posted online. Cambridge is looking to simplify the mechanism whereby PMC records are created for relevant articles in future.

For more information please consult http://publicaccess.nih.gov/policy.htm