Journals' Policies on Compliance with the NIH Public Access Policy

This resource provides information about select journals' policies related to the NIH Public Access Policy. Many of these journals are based in the social sciences and publish population research articles. Authors who publish in a journal listed below can quickly determine whether the publisher has a policy, who must submit the manuscript and which version to submit to PubMed Central, as well as the embargo period.

Journal titles were gathered from the ISI Journals Citation Reports in the subject categories of Demography, Sociology, Economics, and Gerontology. Additional titles were supplied by members of the Association for Population/Family Planning Libraries and Information Centers-International.

Answers listed in the column "Has NIH Public Access Policy Compliance Statement?" refer to the publisher's traditional publishing method, and not open access publishing options, which often are available for a fee.

Many publishers do not have an NIH Public Access Policy compliance statement permitting authors to submit manuscripts to PubMed Central. In these cases, NIH guidance specifies that "Authors must submit the final peer-reviewed manuscript with a 12-months embargo period" which is mandatory per the NIH policy and US federal regulation. Authors may violate the terms of their copyright agreement in doing so and should obtain permission from publishers to submit their manuscripts to PubMed Central.

Compliance policies vary by publisher and sometimes even by journal. Check with publisher for official guidance. Note that a customized copyright agreement between publisher and author precedes the stated guidelines provided here. If the information in the table (below) needs to be updated, please send the information to cpclib@unc.edu.

* Definitions:

Final peer-reviewed manuscript: investigator's final manuscript including all modifications from the peer review process.

Final published article: Journal's authoritative copy of the article, including all modifications from the publishing peer review process, copy-editing and stylistic edits, and formatting changes.

Embargo period: The time period, in months, that the publisher retains rights to distribution of the article. Upon submission to PubMed Central and until the embargo period passes, PubMed Central will provide a brief record of the manuscript.

updated 3/10/2009