Do you have any research grants from United States Federal government?
If you do, you need to be aware of the NIH's mandatory Public Access Policy, as well as the 2022 Nelson Memo.
The NIH's Public Access Policy stipulates that all investigators funded by NIH grants must submit electronic copies of their final peer-reviewed manuscripts when accepted for publication. The manuscripts must be publicly available no later than 12 months after official publication.
The Nelson memo, titled “Guidance to Make Federally-Funded Research Freely Available Without Delay”—also known informally as the “OSTP-Nelson memo” or the “Public Access Memo” is a memorandum written by Dr. Alondra Nelson, Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). It was released in August of 2022 and provides guidelines to make federally funded research available to the public immediately and at no cost. The memo calls on all federal agencies to generate policies that eliminate the current 12-month waiting period for access to the outputs of federally funded research, including articles and data.
The new guidelines are about maximizing return on research investments for the taxpayer and public, but they will also benefit researchers. Compliance with the new guidelines will ultimately increase research equity and further establish integrity and trustworthiness of research. Timely sharing of research data will help the world meet the ever-growing challenges of the 21st century through access and reuse.
There are a few simple things individual researchers can do.
Do you have questions? Ask your SMHS Librarian!
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