Medicine and Health Sciences

NIH's Public Access Policy, mandating that all articles arising from NIH funds must be submitted to PubMed Central upon acceptance for publication, has been a boon for researchers, medical practitioners and public, making publicly-funded research accessible to all.  But it has been a source of confusion for authors, who may encounter conflicts between the NIH mandate and the stipulations of publishers' contracts.

Ben Grillot of the Association of Research Libraries has published a report titled "PubMed Central Deposit and Author Rights", providing guidelines on how authors can balance NIH requirements and publishers' restrictions.  The report is available for free on the ARL website at http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/grillot-pubmed.pdf.