NIAID: Complying With Public Access in Progress Reports—Reflections After Two Months

From:   NIAID Funding Newsletter
Complying With Public Access in Progress Reports—Reflections After Two Months
Since NIH made noncompeting awards contingent on compliance with public access reporting, we've had to delay funding for roughly 20 percent of our noncompeting awards.

To help you avoid this, we thought you might find it helpful to hear some tips and insights from our program and grants management staff, based on questions they've received and areas of confusion they've observed.

PHS 2590 (Paper) Reports: Print the PDF

We noticed many PHS 2590 progress reports did not include the My NCBI-generated PDF that confirms you have complied with public access requirements.

Remember to include a copy of that PDF with your PHS 2590. It’s the only document NIH will accept as proof of compliance.

Go to My Bibliography: Award Compliance Reports in PDF for eRA Commons Users for instructions.

Foreign Grantees Follow the Same Rules

Public access rules apply to everybody funded by NIH, foreign or domestic.

You're Responsible for Compliance Even if You're Not an Author

If a published paper is the result of direct costs from your grant award, you are responsible for its complying with the public access policy—even if you’re not an author.

You may want to check the My Bibliography compliance wizard to see which papers have been affiliated with your awards, and get in touch with authors for non-compliant papers before your progress report is due.

For instructions, read Managing Compliance With the NIH Public Access Policy on the My Bibliography information page.

Coauthors Have Power

Any author may submit final peer-reviewed manuscripts to PubMed Central (PMC). If you're a coauthor, you don't need to rely on your first author to complete public access requirements.

PMC will notify you if another author has already submitted the manuscript.

Pay Attention to Which Submission Method Applies to Your Paper

Depending on your submission method, some papers require the author to take action. Pay special attention to instructions for Methods C and D on NIH's Submission Methods.

Don't Forget NIH's Role!

Public access rules are uniform for all institutes and centers, and NIH has a service desk dedicated to public access matters.

Our program staff can assist, but we're taking our instructions directly from NIH, so you might also want to go directly to the source.

Email PublicAccess@nih.gov with questions and use NIH's public access Overview Web site for more information.