Public Access Policies

Frequently Asked Questions

What do I need to know about the new National Institutes of Health (NIH) public access policy? 
NIH accelerated their public access plan to go into effect July 1, 2025, and applies to active NIH grants. Final peer-reviewed manuscripts resulting in whole or part from NIH-funding are now required to be submitted to PubMed Central (PMC) for immediate public access – i.e. the 12-month embargo period has been eliminated.

What has been the response to the new 2025 NIH public access policy?
Some publishers (American Chemical Society (ACS), Elsevier, IEEE, Wiley, SpringerNature) are tacking on fees to submit Author Accepted Manuscripts (AAMs) to PMC and increasing article-processing fees (APCs) for open-access publishing. NIH is considering a cap on APC fees that can be paid by grant-funding and prohibiting AAM-submission fees from being paid by grant-funding; to gather feedback, they released a Request for Information on Maximizing Research Funds by Limiting Allowable Publishing Costs (comments closed).

• For more information about working with publishers' policies see the Authors Alliance updated NIH and publisher guidance: what author's need to know about the NIH public access policy.

How can federal funding agencies legally require public access to publications if a publisher’s terms require an embargo period before allowing deposit in a publicly-accessible repository?
Through the Government Use License, a federal agency “reserves a royalty-free, nonexclusive, and irrevocable right to reproduce, publish, or otherwise use the work for Federal purposes and to authorize others to do so.” See Supplemental Guidance to the 2024 NIH Public Access Policy: Government Use License and Rights.

• Authors are encouraged to be transparent with publishers and include a statement, such as the following, with their submitted manuscript: This manuscript is the result of funding in whole or in part by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). It is subject to the NIH Public Access Policy. Through acceptance of this federal funding, NIH has been given a right to make this manuscript publicly available in PubMed Central upon the Official Date of Publication, as defined by NIH.

Are there consequences for not complying with the public access policy?
Failure to adhere to a funding agency’s requirements to make grant-funded publications and or data publicly available according to the agency’s updated public access policy could impact future awards. For example, NIH included this statement in NOT-OD-25-047:

• Noncompliance with the NIH Public Access Policy may be considered by NIH regarding future funding decisions for the recipient institution (e.g., as authorized in the NIH GPS 8.5, Specific Award Conditions and Remedies for Noncompliance (Specific Award Conditions and Enforcement Actions)). Non-competing continuation grant awards are subject to a delay in award processing for noncompliance with the NIH Public Access Policy.