The NIH policy on enhancing public access to publications resulting from NIH-funded research

On February 3, 2005, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced its policy on “enhancing public access to archived publications resulting from NIH-funded research.” Through this policy, the NIH requests that publications resulting from NIH-funded research be deposited by the authors in an archive at the National Library of Medicine (NLM). Authors can elect to have their publications released to the public immediately or up to 12 months after publication. There are three stated reasons for this policy: (1) to provide public access to the results of NIH-funded research. (2) to create an archive of NIH-funded research. (3) to make the full text of that archive searchable.