2008-09-01
Two years ago, ASH helped create a program that enables Blood authors to comply with a voluntary NIH policy on enhanced access. Blood relieves all who publish NIH-funded articles from the request to submit manuscripts to the NIH archive because Blood does this on their behalf. This program, known as the PMC (NIH Portfolio) Archive Program, has been successful, and Blood
authors are in compliance with the NIH policy. This May, the voluntary
NIH policy for authors became mandatory and ASH continued to work with
the NIH to assure that the NIH Portfolio program would continue and
that all Blood authors would be in compliance with the NIH policy.
The NIH Portfolio Program has the following terms: the participating
journal provides NIH with final articles representing NIH-funded
research; NIH has internal use of the articles during participating
journals' embargo period, which can be no longer than 12 months; during
the embargo period, NIH can link to the journal Web sites to provide
access to NIH-funded research articles; and following the embargo
period, NIH can provide links to the journal, but can also distribute
articles directly from its PMC Web site.
ASH provided comments to NIH and was invited to participate in the
June NIH Public Access Advisory Committee meeting. ASH shared its view
that the NIH Portfolio program meets the NIH Public Access Policy goals
while providing less burden for our journal's authors than the newly
mandated policy and successfully conveyed the importance of maintaining
the PMC (NIH Portfolio) Archive Program, expanding promotion of the
program, and getting other nonprofit publishers to participate. A copy
of the comments can be read online.
At NIH's Public Access Advisory Committee meeting in June, ASH also
brought to NIH's attention the Society's concerns with how NIH was
implementing the new mandatory policy within its intramural community.
Earlier in the spring, an NIH memo to the intramural community had
provided confusing instructions for complying with the policy. The memo
also described an unrelated publishing policy that prevented NIH
intramural researchers from signing publisher copyright transfer
agreements — a policy that consequently temporarily stopped publishing
of all articles written by NIH intramural researchers. Because of ASH's
ongoing partnership with NIH, the Society was able to successfully
resolve these issues with NIH attorneys and publishing has since
resumed. New, simplified information for the intramural community is
now available online.
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