Federal Agencies Public Access Policies

Update on NIH Public Access Policy: What You Need to Know about the 2024 NIH Public Access Policy?

Overview

On April 30, 2025, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced a significant update to its Public Access Policy, aimed at accelerating access to federally funded research. This change aligns with the broader federal initiative to ensure free, immediate, and equitable access to scientific knowledge.

Effective Date

The updated policy went into effect for Author Accepted Manuscripts resulting from NIH-funded research accepted for publication in a journal on or after July 1, 2025.   

What’s New?

Under the 2008 NIH Public Access Policy, researchers were allowed to delay public access to their peer-reviewed manuscripts for up to 12 months after publication. The 2024 NIH Public Access Policy eliminates this embargo period, requiring that all NIH-funded research articles be deposited into PubMed Central upon acceptance for publication and be made immediately available to the public via PubMed Central on the official date of publication. 

What Are the Major Requirements?

• NIH requires immediate submission of final peer-reviewed journal articles (Author Accepted Manuscripts or AAM) to PubMed Central (PMC) upon acceptance for publication.
• NIH requires authors to include an acknowledgment of NIH funding in the Author Accepted Manuscript and Final Published Article.
• NIH requires authors to grant NIH the rights to the accepted manuscripts that are equivalent to those of the Federal Purpose License.

How to Comply?

• Submit the author-accepted manuscript resulting from NIH-funded research to PMC via the NIH Manuscript Submission System (NIHMS) immediately upon acceptance for publication by the PI or a designee.
• Submit the final published article resulting from NIH-funded research to PMC by the journals or publishers through their agreements with the National Library of Medicine (NLM) of NIH or via special arrangements with the author.

Are There Any Costs?

• There is no cost to comply with the policy itself.
• Submitting manuscripts to PMC and making them publicly accessible is free.
• However, some journals may charge publication fees. These costs are not required by NIH but may be incurred depending on the journal you choose.
• Rutgers University Libraries have agreements with several journals/publishers to cover APCs for our researchers. Please explore this page for OA publishing opportunities for Rutgers researchers at https://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/research-support/open-access-publishing-opportunities-rutgers-researchers.  

Why Is This Important?

This enhanced Policy aims to:

• Promote transparency and trust in publicly funded research.
• Enhance reproducibility and collaboration across the scientific community.
• Ensure that taxpayer-funded research is accessible to all, including researchers, educators, clinicians, and the public.
• Failure to comply with the Policy and acknowledge federal funding in the manuscript will affect grantees’ future funding decisions or delay the release of funding.

Resources for Compliance

• 2024 NIH Public Access Policy
• Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
• NIH Office of Science Policy – Public Access
• My Bibliography in NLM NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information)
• NIHMS Submission System
• PubMed Central

How Can the Libraries Help You?

The Health Sciences libraries offer:

• Workshops and training on 2024 NIH Public Access Policy Compliance
  • Wednesday, June 11, 2025, 12pm – 1pm, https://libcal.rutgers.edu/event/14692759 (Registration Closed) | Recording: https://youtu.be/Ym4OemlLsmk?si=NYFNMaRTmoE_kj2i
  • Friday, June 27, 2025, 12pm – 1pm, https://libcal.rutgers.edu/event/14709837 (Registration Closed) | Recording: https://youtu.be/x11XeFAhJH4?si=oH5cIk0tU8Q43WRz
• One-on-one consultations for guidance and troubleshooting by making an appointment with a librarian at https://libcal.rutgers.edu/appointments/RBHS.

Contact Us

• Email rbhs_librarians@libraries.rutgers.edu or
• Visit the NIH Public Access research guide for more information.

• Author Accepted Manuscripts accepted for publication in a journal.
• Paper resulting from NIH-funded research
• Paper accepted for publication on or after July 1, 2025.

• Author’s accepted manuscript (AAM) of a peer-reviewed paper accepted for journal publication
• Includes all modifications from the peer review process
• Submitted by Authors/designee or  Publishers/Journals to PMC

• Journal’s authoritative copy of the paper
• Includes all modifications from peer review and the publishing process: copyediting, stylistic edits, and formatting changes
• Submitted by Publishers/Journals to PMC

PubMed Central (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/): A digital repository created by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) for providing access to full text journal articles and authors' final versions of peer-reviewed manuscripts resulting from NIH-funded research. It is also a repository for journals and publishers that signed an agreement with the National Library of Medicine to place their content in the repository.

PubMed (http://pubmed.gov): PubMed provides free access to over 38 million references for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, which indexes about 5,200 worldwide biomedical journals, selected life sciences journals, and online books.