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Retaining Your Rights
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Retaining Your Rights

Use the Publication Agreement Amendment to retain rights to comply with the NIH Public Access Policy and to use your work in connection with your own scholarship and teaching.

Use the Publisher Licence for NIH Compliance to ensure you have the rights necessary to comply with the NIH Public Access Policy.

Some journals automatically submit articles to PubMed Central in accordance with the policy. View a list of these journals on the NIH website.

Some publishers will submit individual final published articles to PubMed Central, usually as part of the publisher's fee-based open-access option.

See a list of publisher policies on papers from NIH-funded researchers on the Open Access Directory wiki.

Visit the searchable site Sherpa/RoMEO for a summary of permissions that are normally given as part of each publisher's copyright transfer agreement.

Authors are responsible for making sure they retain sufficient rights to their work to be able to submit their articles to PubMed Central.

Before You Submit Your Next Paper

You should make prospective publishers aware at the earliest stages that your article is subject to the NIH policy. In the cover letter of submission to a journal, you should include a statement such as the following: "This article is based on funding from the National Institutes of Health and therefore is subject to the NIH Public Access Policy. Acceptance of this article for publication will be conditioned on the journal publisher's agreement to terms permitting compliance with the NIH Public Access Policy."

If you are submitting your article electronically, you may include the same statement and provide a link to this Web site.

Before You Sign a Publication Agreement

You should not sign any publication agreement related to articles or other publications resulting from NIH funding unless you are certain that the agreement complies with the NIH policy. (The same advice applies to electronic click-through agreements that may be part of the journal's manuscript submission system.) In order to make that process easier for you and for the publisher, Columbia University has prepared two versions of an Amendment to be added to a publication agreement that you may attach to your publication agreement:

  • "Publisher License for NIH Compliance" focuses relatively simply on granting to you the rights necessary to comply with the NIH policy.
  • "Publication Agreement Amendment for NIH Compliance and Educational Uses" would, in addition, allow you to retain rights to make common uses of your publication in connection with your own scholarship and research. The added language in this version is optional, but you may find it important for your future uses of the article.

You should print a copy of one of these Amendments for each agreement you sign. Add the title of the article, sign the Amendment, and staple it to the agreement. Ask the publisher to sign and return to you a copy of the agreement with the Amendment.

Keep a Copy of Your Agreement

Many future questions about your compliance with the NIH policy, and many questions about the use of your article, may be answered by the terms of the agreement you sign. Please review the terms of all of your agreements carefully. Be sure to keep a copy of all publication agreements in your permanent files.