As of April 7, all research papers funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health must be made available for free online within one year of their publication, The Chronicle of Higher Education reported.
The NIH released the new regulations in January at the request of Congress. The policy, which has been criticized for being either too harsh or too lenient, dictates that all NIH-funded papers must be placed in PubMed Central, NIH’s online database. Several universities and library groups have created Web sites to help NIH-funded researchers adhere to the new guidelines.
