Dr. Lyric Jorgenson has co-authored this blog with Dr. Stephen Sherry (r). Dr. Sherry is the Acting Director of the National Library of Medicine within NIH.
We say it all the time – NIH is the steward of the Nation’s investment in biomedical research. But what does that really mean? For us, it means making sure NIH delivers on its mission to turn discovery into health. To turn this into reality, NIH develops policies to support responsible and innovative research, and to ensure that individuals across the country can realize the benefits from their investments in research.
Need proof? NIH has long championed access to research products, whether it be access to research data (e.g., NIH Data Management and Sharing Policy), research results (e.g., 2008 NIH Public Access Policy), or even in research inventions (e.g., draft NIH IRP Access Policy). These policies reflect NIH’s unwavering commitment to helping patients, families, and healthcare providers better understand and address the most critical health concerns facing their communities and spur future research and translation of research results to new products and practices.
In that spirit, today I’m pleased to share the news that NIH is releasing a new NIH Public Access Policy to make the results of NIH-funded research accessible as quickly as possible. The new Policy, which will replace the 2008 Public Access Policy upon effective date, removes the twelve-month embargo period to provide accelerated access to published manuscripts. Importantly, NIH was cognizant while developing this Policy that it would not exacerbate potential inequities in publishing, and as such, work within the existing policy framework to minimize new burdens on the research community.
Alongside the new Policy, NIH is also releasing its plan to make it easier for researchers, clinicians, students, and the public to find and make use of research results. Particularly, NIH is outlining how researchers and institutions should leverage use of metadata and persistent identifiers and proposes new requirements for NIH-supported repositories to collect and make this information available and searchable.
More information on this plan and information on how to provide comments can be found here. These efforts are also aligned with activities across the rest of government as we all work to implement the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy’s (OSTP) memo Ensuring Free, Immediate, and Equitable Access to Federally Funded Research.
Today is a milestone day for us all, as NIH funded research will now be publicly available without delay. We look forward to hearing from you on how to continue to promote the highest level of transparency and accountability in research as we continue on this journey together.
We wish you the happiest of holidays and look forward to discussing the issue of public access more with you in 2025!
