Poster Board Number: 55
Title: National Institutes of Health Public Access Policy and the University of Michigan Libraries’ Role in Assisting with Depositing to PubMed Central
Objective: On April 7, 2008, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) instituted the NIH public access policy. The policy requires all researchers receiving NIH funding to place ‘‘an electronic version of their final peer-reviewed manuscripts upon acceptance for publication, to be made publicly available no later than 12 months after the official date of publication’’ into ‘‘the digital archive PubMed Central,’’ thus making them freely available. The University of Michigan sought to offer unique support to its researchers by offering a deposit service.
Method: Peer-reviewed manuscripts are deposited via the NIH Manuscript Submission System (NIHMS) to comply with the NIH public access policy. University of Michigan librarians learned that NIHMS provided a publisher interface for journals to deposit author papers and thus assist with compliance, and they thought that arrangements could be made with NIH to utilize such an interface to assist their own researchers with depositing into NIHMS. Working with staff at NIH and with the guidance of the coordinator of Deep Blue, the university’s institutional repository, the libraries created a publisher account with the NIHMS system that authorized librarians to deposit on behalf of multiple researchers, rather than having to access each author’s individual account.
Results: Once the system was fully operational, the libraries at the University of Michigan began to offer the service to researchers who needed to comply with the policy. Five librarians rotate on a weekly basis to deposit manuscripts into NIHMS. The service has been well received by University of Michigan researchers; peak times occur when there is an NIH grant deadline for competing or non-competing grants and when grant progress reports are due.
Conclusions: This poster will illustrate the deposit system that University of Michigan Libraries have established, which could serve as a model to other libraries in providing support to their own NIH researchers in complying with the NIH public access policy.
Authors: Merle Rosenzweig, Librarian; Anna E. Schnitzer, Librarian, Taubman Health Sciences Library; Jim Ottaviani, Coordinator, Deep Blue, Shapiro Library; University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
