From the Publisher of PEDIATRICS
PEDIATRICS Policy on Deposits in PubMed Central

July 3, 2008 – A federal law enacted in April requires authors whose research is funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) to deposit the final, peer-reviewed manuscripts upon acceptance into PubMed Central. The manuscripts are to be made publicly available no later than 12 months after the official date of publication.

For NIH-funded authors who publish in PEDIATRICS, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the publisher of the journal, requires that you choose the 12-month embargo period. During the PubMed Central manuscript submission process, you will be asked when the manuscript can be released; choose 12 months. This will keep your submission consistent with the journal’s own embargo policy.

PEDIATRICS Open Access Policy

Articles published in PEDIATRICS are available free online to the public one year after publication. This policy applies to all articles, not just those based on NIH-funded research. (The articles remain open to the public for eight years, after which they are under access control.)

Why does PEDIATRICS keep articles under access control for one year? The journal has adopted this publishing model to help sustain subscription revenue, which supports the AAP and its programs, and to preserve the value of the content as a member benefit. Some sections of the journal are always free to any reader. These are:

  • Table of contents for each issue
  • Abstracts for all articles
  • All statements in the "From the American Academy of Pediatrics" section
  • Articles published only in the online edition

Policies of Other Funding Entities

Authors whose work has been funded by the Wellcome Trust or the Howard Hughes Medical Institute are required to publish in journals that allow articles to be available free to the public within six months of publication. The AAP is looking into how to accommodate this requirement. One possible solution is to charge authors a fee so that their articles could be made free online upon publication.

AAP Welcomes Feedback

PEDIATRICS editors and staff welcome feedback from authors on our policies. To submit a comment, please contact Susan Zahn, Managing Editor, at szahn{at}aap.org or 847-434-4389.