In the US, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has issued its Policy on enhancing public access to publications resulting from NIH-funded research. The final policy 'requests' NIH-funded investigators to submit to PubMed Central an electronic version of the authors' final manuscript upon acceptance. At the authors' discretion the papers will be made publicly available through PubMed Central within 12 months of publication. The policy has changed from the draft that gained public support and so has received a muted welcome from open access advocates.