NIH Public Access Policy
NIH and certain private funding agencies require that a final, electronic version of manuscripts describing research they supported be submitted to the National Library of Medicine's PubMed Central site. Read more information about this NIH policy.
The Journal of Neuroscience will deposit in PubMed Central final versions of manuscripts that describe work that was funded by agencies that have this requirement. Manuscripts describing work that was funded by the NIH, HHMI, and the Wellcome Trust and that are accepted for publication in The Journal of Neuroscience on or after April 7, 2008 will be deposited. Authors funded by these agencies should make sure to accurately describe the source of funding in the acknowledgments section of their manuscripts.
Although the NIH policy calls for manuscripts in PubMed Central to be freely accessible after 12 months, The Journal will allow manuscripts to be publicly accessible through PubMed Central six months after publication, which is when all The Journal articles become freely accessible. This service will be provided automatically, without a fee, and should fulfill the obligations with which grantees of these agencies must comply.
Open Choice
Over the past few years, scientific publishing has moved toward increasingly open access. Some funding institutions now insist that the work they support be published in journals that provide free access six months after publication. To comply with this mandate, The Journal of Neuroscience has allowed free access to all articles after six months since January 2006.
In response to the trend to freer access, The Journal of Neuroscience will now offer an Open Choice option for articles submitted on or after Jan. 1, 2008. By paying a fee, authors can have their articles freely available on The Journal's website as soon as they are published. Details on how to select Open Choice will be provided in acceptance letters to authors.
SfN hopes authors will find Open Choice to be a valuable option. The response to Open Choice will give The Journal information about the extent to which authors and their funding agencies are willing to financially support an entirely open-access journal.
