National Institutes of Health Public Access Policy (NIH PAP)

Office of Science and Technology Policy

The mission of the Office of Science and Technology Policy is threefold

1. To provide the President and his senior staff with accurate, relevant, and timely scientific and technical advice on all matters of consequence;
2. To ensure that the policies of the Executive Branch are informed by sound science;
3. To ensure that the scientific and technical work of the Executive Branch is properly coordinated so as to provide the greatest benefit to society.

(source: OSTP About page)

Public Access Policy 

The Obama Administration is committed to the proposition that citizens deserve easy access to the results of research their tax dollars have paid for. That’s why, in the policy memorandum (linked below) released in 2013, OSTP Director John Holdren has directed Federal agencies with more than $100M in R&D expenditures to develop plans to make the results of federally funded research freely available to the public—generally within one year of publication.

Over the past two years, the policy has been updated and legislature has moved through Congress.  

2013 Memo

2015 Update from Director John Holdren

The NIH Public Access Policy implements Division F Section 217 of PL 111-8 (Omnibus Appropriations Act, 2009).  The law states:

The Director of the National Institutes of Health ("NIH") shall require in the current fiscal year and thereafter that all investigators funded by the NIH submit or have submitted for them to the National Library of Medicine's PubMed Central an electronic version of their final, peer-reviewed manuscripts upon acceptance for publication, to be made publicly available no later than 12 months after the official date of publication: Provided, that the NIH shall implement the public access policy in a manner consistent with copyright law.

(Source: NIH PAP - Policy)