JASN Public Access Policy
Authors: William G. Couser
Journal: Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (2005)

On May 2, 2005, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) began implementing its Public Access Policy (available online at http://www.nih.gov/about/publicaccess/Finalpublicaccessimplementation031505.htm), which is directed toward dissemination of the results of research funded in whole or in part by the NIH. The purpose of this policy is to encourage scientists to release their peer-reviewed, NIH-supported research to the public as soon as possible, so that the benefits of the research can be known to the taxpayers who have funded it and scientists can see the results of their work disseminated as quickly and broadly as possible. JASN fully supports the intent of this policy. Since 2001 JASN has had a free-access policy with 12-month rolling access, which means that every manuscript published in JASN becomes freely available on the JASN web site at http://www.jasn.org 12 months after its publication date in JASN. At the same time, JASN and other scholarly peer-reviewed journals can continue to exist, exercising editorial judgment and managing the laborious process of peer review, only to the extent that revenue from subscriptions and advertising supports those endeavors. It is the determination of ASN that the balance between economic viability of its journals and free access of information to the public dictates that the meaning of “as soon as possible” for JASN continues to be 12 months from publication. How does the new NIH policy affect JASN and its authors? The NIH is asking investigators to voluntarily submit to PubMed Central (PMC; http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov) an electronic copy of the full text of any NIH-funded scientific report at the time of its acceptance for publication, together with a proviso of when the article should become public. PMC is the NIH digital repository of full-text, peer-reviewed, biomedical, behavioral, and clinical research journals. It is a publicly accessible, permanent, and searchable electronic archive. It is linked to, but not part of, PubMed, the US National Library of Medicine’s online database of published scientific articles (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov). The policy applies only to original research articles funded from any NIH grant source including career and fellowship awards. It does not apply to review articles, editorials, or other commentaries. The NIH has repeatedly stated that the policy is a request rather than a requirement. It has further said that it will neither monitor the compliance of investigators nor take information about compliance into account in making future funding decisions. JASN takes no position as to whether or not its authors should comply with this request. The NIH requests authors to deposit the peer-reviewed, revised, and accepted author version of the manuscript, not the paper that has been copyedited, proofread, and formatted for the journal. The technical requirements for manuscripts deposited with PMC are different from those of JASN, and JASN will not play any role in depositing manuscripts on the PMC web site. However, JASN does require that authors who choose to deposit their articles on the PMC web site stipulate to PMC that their JASN-accepted manuscripts be made public no sooner than one year after final publication in JASN, in accord with JASN’s current open access policy. The date of publication in JASN is the date the paper is posted online on JASNExpress. The tradition of the peer-reviewed journal has stood the test of time in its advancement of scientific discovery and the dissemination of information. JASN is committed to ensuring the continuation of that successful tradition while also embracing the exciting possibilities offered by new technology that makes possible even broader dissemination of the knowledge that is the focus of all our endeavors.