Passed by Congress in January 2008,The Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2008, has the following mandate:
            The Director of the National Institutes of Health shall require that all investigators funded by the NIH submit or have submitted for them to the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed Central an electronic version of their final, peer-reviewed manuscripts upon acceptance for publication, to be made publicly available no later than 12 months after the official date of publication: Provided, That the NIH shall implement the public access policy in a manner consistent with copyright law.

To summarize the new policy, all accepted articles for publication, which are funded by NIH, must also include the final version of manuscripts to PubMed Central within 12 months following the publication date.

Additionally, the PMC or NIH Manuscript Submission reference number must be included in the citing of applicable articles arising from the NIH funded Research.
Additional Information can be found on the NIH Website: