New NIH public access policy
June 24, 2025
A new 2024 National Institutes of Health (NIH) Public Access Policy, announced in December 2024 and originally scheduled to go into effect in December 2025, took effect on July 1. The new policy requires that authors submit any manuscript that is in whole or part the result of funding by NIH, and that is accepted for publication on or after July 1, 2025, to PubMed Central without embargo.
Since 2008, NIH has ensured public access to published results of NIH-funded research by requiring researchers to submit their manuscripts to PubMed Central. The 2008 policy allowed up to a 12 month embargo period before submission to PubMed; under the new policy, articles must be publicly available without embargo.
How to comply
For all manuscripts published on or after July 1, authors must ensure compliance with NIH Public Access Policy. See our guide to the National Institute of Health Public Access Policy for more information about how to comply.
Non-compliance will interrupt disbursements of NIH grant funds.
Open access (OA) publishing options
The library has open access publishing agreements with a number of publishers, including RSC, Wiley, and Springer Nature, which defray or eliminate the costs of complying with the public access policy. (See our guide to Scholarly Publishing for the full list). Among them is a new "read and green" agreement with the American Chemical Society, the major publisher for chemistry researchers.
With funder mandates and public access policies increasing, when getting ready to publish you should consider:
- Retaining your rights by using an author's addenda in publishing agreements so that you can use and share your work.
- Finding publishers that offer cost-effective OA options.
- Advocating for change by contacting publishers about their publication charges, and suggest they make more reasonable OA publishing agreements with the library.