The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), Science Commons, and the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) have jointly released a white paper to help university and medical school administrators ensure their institutions comply with public access requirements that are soon to be a condition of National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding.
Effective April 7, 2008, investigators must deposit articles stemming from NIH funding into the agency's PubMed Central online archive, to be made publicly available no later than 12 months after publication in a journal. The whitepaper, Complying with the National Institutes of Health Public Access Policy: Copyright Considerations and Options, will help provosts, research administrators, and campus counsel understand their institution's copyright-related obligations and options under the new congressionally mandated policy, which was announced in January and replaces an earlier voluntary approach.
The timely analysis was prepared by Michael W. Carroll, an attorney, copyright expert, and faculty member at Villanova University law school. Carroll reviews the policy and its background, explains the legal context, and presents six alternative copyright management strategies that will help grantee institutions assure they reserve the necessary rights for articles to be made available in PubMed Central.
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