{"id":188,"date":"2026-06-11T10:31:01","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T14:31:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/library.udel.edu\/collections\/?page_id=188"},"modified":"2026-06-11T15:58:36","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T19:58:36","slug":"public-access-policy-guidance","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/library.udel.edu\/collections\/open-access\/public-access-policy-guidance\/","title":{"rendered":"NIH Public Access Policy Guidance"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>What the NIH Public Access Policy Requires<\/h2>\n<p>The 2024 NIH Public Access Policy requires that any peer-reviewed manuscript accepted for publication on or after July 1, 2025, that is the result of NIH funding (in whole or in part) be submitted to PubMed Central (PMC) upon acceptance and made publicly available immediately upon the Official Date of Publication. The previous policy that allowed for a 12-month embargo option is no longer in place.<\/p>\n<h3>Primary NIH References<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/grants.nih.gov\/grants\/guide\/notice-files\/NOT-OD-25-047.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NOT-OD-25-047<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/grants.nih.gov\/grants\/guide\/notice-files\/NOT-OD-25-049.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NOT-OD-25-049<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/grants.nih.gov\/grants\/guide\/notice-files\/NOT-OD-25-048.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NOT-OD-25-048<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/publicaccess.nih.gov\/faq.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NIH Public Access Policy FAQ<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Key Points<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>The policy applies regardless of whether the NIH-funded PI is the corresponding author.<\/li>\n<li>The policy applies even when non-NIH funds also supported the work.<\/li>\n<li>The policy applies to manuscripts that acknowledge any NIH support, including support from NIH-funded core facilities, even if the authors do not directly hold NIH funding.<\/li>\n<li>The Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) is the version that must be deposited to PMC. The AAM refers to the final peer-reviewed version of the manuscript, prior to publisher copyediting.<\/li>\n<li>Authors must include a funding acknowledgment statement and agree to a Government Use License granting NIH the right to make the AAM publicly available.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>How UD Investigators Can Comply with No-Embargo PMC Deposit<\/h2>\n<p>UD investigators have several options for complying with the immediate-deposit requirement. The appropriate pathway depends on the journal and publisher involved.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Submit to fully open access (OA) journals. It is important to note that while many OA journals charge APCs, not all do. The <a href=\"https:\/\/doaj.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Directory of Open Access Journals<\/a> (DOAJ) is searchable with a \u201cwithout fees\u201d filter.<\/li>\n<li>Submit to subscription or hybrid journals with verified zero-embargo green OA policies. Publishers that deposit the AAM to NIHMS\/PMC on the author\u2019s behalf include BMJ Group (for all NIH-funded research), Karger, ASHA, and a subset of Sage journals indicated on Sage\u2019s funder-compliance page. Publishers that permit zero-embargo self-deposit by the author at no fee include AAAS\/Science, JAMA and the JAMA Network, PNAS, Annual Reviews, American Society for Microbiology, and Lippincott (Wolters Kluwer) for NIH-funded non-OA articles. In general, authors should confirm current policy on each publisher\u2019s funder-compliance page when submitting a manuscript for publication, since publisher terms have been changing rapidly since July 2025.<\/li>\n<li>Verify journal compliance using the<a href=\"https:\/\/pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/journals\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> PMC Journal List<\/a>. Journals listed with a Release Delay of 0 months and an Active Agreement Status deposit all articles in PMC immediately, satisfying the policy with no additional author action.<\/li>\n<li>Submit to journals covered by the Library&#8217;s transformative agreements. These agreements fall into two categories: those that enable free deposit of the Author Accepted Manuscript to open repositories (but without APC discounts for Gold OA publishing), and those that waive or reduce Article Processing Charges for UD corresponding authors. Current agreements cover the American Chemical Society, Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), Cambridge University Press, Royal Society of Chemistry, and Springer Nature hybrid journals (Nature portfolio titles excluded). The full list of agreements held by UD can be found on the <a href=\"http:\/\/library.udel.edu\/collections\/open-access\/agreements-discounts\/\">Agreements and Discounts page<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Consider society journals when APCs are unavoidable. Society journal APCs vary widely and are not always lower than commercial publishers, but many societies offer member discounts, fee waivers, or hybrid options worth considering prior to manuscript submission.<\/li>\n<li>Build APCs into future grant budgets. If a researcher plans to target journals that do not offer zero-embargo deposit, they should include APCs and related publication costs in their proposal budgets. NIH currently allows publication costs as allowable expenses, though this is under active reconsideration (see NOT-OD-25-138). UD pre-award staff can advise on appropriate budget categories and justifications.<\/li>\n<li>Acknowledge NIH support and grant ID in the manuscript itself. Include the funding acknowledgment and NIH grant identifier in the submitted manuscript. This puts the journal on notice of compliance obligations from the start of submission and strengthens your position if a publisher later raises concerns about PMC deposit.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Support Available to UD Authors<\/h2>\n<h3><a href=\"https:\/\/library.udel.edu\/collections\/open-access\/agreements-discounts\/\">Transformative Agreements<\/a> (APCs Waived or Discounted)<\/h3>\n<p>UD Library has <a href=\"https:\/\/library.udel.edu\/collections\/open-access\/agreements-discounts\/\">agreements with some publishers<\/a> that waive or reduce APCs for UD corresponding authors.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Still have questions? <a href=\"https:\/\/ask.lib.udel.edu\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Contact a librarian<\/a> or the <a href=\"https:\/\/research.udel.edu\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">UD Research Office<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What the NIH Public Access Policy Requires The 2024 NIH Public Access Policy requires that any peer-reviewed manuscript accepted for publication on or after July 1, 2025, that is the result of NIH funding (in whole or in part) be &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"parent":11,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"class_list":["post-188","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-18 22:19:00","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.udel.edu\/collections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.udel.edu\/collections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.udel.edu\/collections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.udel.edu\/collections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/197"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.udel.edu\/collections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/library.udel.edu\/collections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":215,"href":"https:\/\/library.udel.edu\/collections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/188\/revisions\/215"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.udel.edu\/collections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.udel.edu\/collections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}