Published May 1, 2025, via Research News
The 2024 Public Access Policy, originally slated to go into effect on December 31, 2025, will now be effective as of July 1, 2025. Author Accepted Manuscripts meeting this qualification and with acceptance dates on or after July 1, 2025, are subject to the policy. Until that time, NIH’s current Public Access Policy, originally issued in 2008, will remain in effect.
As a reminder, the most significant change in the new policy is the removal of the 12-month embargo period before manuscripts resulting from NIH funding must be made publicly available. NIH has also issued supplemental guidance on government use license and rights and publication costs.
Key points to supplemental guidance on government use license and rights:
- Author Accepted Manuscripts to PubMed Central must agree to a submission statement as part of the standard PubMed Central manuscript submission process.
- Authors are strongly encouraged to include the NIH Rights Statement in manuscripts along with the required funding acknowledgement. The NIH Rights Statement serves to inform publishers and journals that the work is subject to the NIH Policy and that NIH, as the funding agency, has the right to make the Author Accepted Manuscript publicly available in PubMed Central upon the Official Date of Publication. The NIH Rights Statement reads:
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- “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.”
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Key points to supplemental guidance on publication costs:
- Though compliance with the Public Access Policy does not require the payment of an Open Access fee to a journal, the free pathway to compliance can be achieved by depositing the Author Accepted Manuscript into PubMed Central for public availability upon the Official Date of Publication without embargo.
Reuse of publications:
- Grantees must provide NIH the rights to the accepted manuscript that are equivalent to those provided under the Federal Purpose License (“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.”).
As a reminder, after the acknowledgement of funding, per the NIH Grants Policy, authors should also include a disclaimer that reads:
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- “The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.”
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For more information, visit the Becker Medical Library website.