Tips to NIH Public Access Compliance: Don’t forget to check the “NIH funding” box on forms from the journal

Congratulations! Your article has been accepted to a journal. We know this is an exciting time and there are many details to manage.

One key thing to remember – If NIH funding supported the work, don’t forget to check the “NIH funding” box on the publisher’s copyright form. This lets the publisher know that the work was supported by NIH funding.

We know that you are doing a great job of including funding information in the acknowledgements section of your article. But most publishers don’t use the text of your article to identify which articles were NIH funded.

Instead they rely on you (the authors) to check the correct funding boxes on the copyright form.

Publishers of Method D journals use the “NIH funding” box on these forms to identify articles that they need to submit to the NIH Manuscript Submission System (NIHMS). If you don’t check the box, the publisher won’t submit the manuscript and this could result in a delay in getting a PMCID.

Becker Library has received feedback from publishers who report that authors are not checking the appropriate box on the forms to note a work as being NIH-funded and requiring a submission to NIHMS. As follows is a response from a publisher:

“. . .the reason this article has not been submitted to PMC is due to the NIH funding not being recognized by the Corresponding Author whilst completing the Rights and Access form. Please note: for future NIH funded articles, selecting the NIH funding option on the Rights and Access form, will enable the automated process of sending the article to PMC. This will meet compliancy without any delay incurred.”

For examples of copyright forms, see the Sample Publisher Forms box.

On campus, the ten most popular Method D journals in the past three years are:

Annals of Thoracic Surgery
Cell Reports
Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery
Biology of Blood and Marrow Transplantation
Journal of Clinical Oncology
Cell
Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation
Journal of the American College of Radiology
Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology
Journal of Arthroplasty

If you publish in these or other Submission Method D publishers/journals, please remember that you don’t have to pay to comply with the NIH public access policy but you (or your co-authors) do need to check the NIH funding box.

Have a question about the NIH Public Access Policy? Please contact Cathy Sarli or Amy Suiter.