NIH Mandate Seems To Work

Since passage of the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) mandatory public access policy last year, the number of submissions to the National Library of Medicine's (NLM) PubMed Central (PMC) repository, where grantees are now required to deposit their NIH-funded research papers, has risen significantly. According to NIH statistics, submissions to PMC began steadily climbing in December 2007, soon after it became clear a mandatory policy would be adopted for 2008.

In January 2008, submissions to PMC hit an all-time high of 1,255 and have continued to increase significantly every month so far this year. Submissions spiked from 1,852 in March to 2,765 in April—the month the policy officially took effect—2,593 in May, and 2610 in June, nearly triple the total number of submissions for the same months one year ago.

David Lipman, director, National Center for Biotechnology Information for the NLM/NIH, told LJ that although it's still too early to compute compliance rates, the early returns suggest a “reasonable projection would be...around 55–60 percent.”

That represents a stunning turnaround: in February 2006, NIH reported to Congress that compliance rates under its voluntary policy lagged around four percent. The mandatory policy, championed by the library community and SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), is seen as a vital initiative in increasing access to taxpayer-funded medical research.