HHS Expands Open Access Beyond NIH

Last week the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the parent agency of the National Institutes of Health, The Food and Drug Administration, and the Centers for Disease Control (among others) announced its open access policies for research it funds (H/T The Scientist).  The policies are expected to come into effect by the end of this year.

As you might expect, the other HHS agencies subject to the open access policy (a minimum of $100 million in annual research funding) will follow the lead of the National Institutes of Health.  Articles resulting from federally funded research must be deposited in PubMed Central within 12 months of publication.  For digital data, it will have to be available at the time any articles are published.  Researchers must submit a digital management plan as part of their initial research grant application.  According to the HHS Secretary, the infrastructure for this part of the plan is still emerging.  Ultimately the Department wants to link an internal data management system to healthdata.gov.