[USRN comments on draft NIH policy]

"The USRN unequivocally supports repository deposit as the primary compliance mechanism for NIH’s Public Access Policy. NIH-funded investigators must recognize that they can achieve full compliance with the NIH Public Access Policy by depositing their author’s accepted manuscripts into PubMed Central (PMC). This deposit remains free for authors, and any fees requested for submission to PMC (e.g., “article development charges” or similar) are not allowable costs. Ensuring authors do not encounter financial barriers such as publication costs to comply with the agency’s new requirements will promote equity among NIH’s grantees and make compliance more accessible for all researchers.

To further strengthen this aspect of NIH’s draft policy, we encourage the agency to allow other no-cost compliance options such as depositing in an institutional or subject repository....

In our feedback on the draft policy, we recommended that NIH add specific language that states that the agency authorizes the public to reuse the research articles resulting from its funded research entirely. A clear statement of reuse will enable authors to distribute the outcomes of their federally funded research in any open-access repositories for greater dissemination and accessibility. Additionally, the research can be tested for reproducibility. 

In addition to adding the recommended language to the policy itself, we recommend adding language in two additional places in the guidance to explicitly authorize the public to reuse publications. This will not only clarify the rights of the public but also empower authors to distribute their work more widely, thereby increasing the visibility and impact of their research.

It is crucial to include language explicitly permitting public reuse in these two areas as a critical aspect of policy implementation. This will help ensure that both the authors and users of the publications recognize that the public is free to reuse the work widely...."