Federal Public Access Policies NIH

Does the NIH public access policy apply?

It applies to any manuscript that:

• Is peer-reviewed;
• Is accepted for publication in a journal on or after April 7, 2008;
• And, arises from:
  • Any direct funding from an NIH grant or cooperative agreement active in Fiscal Year 2008 or beyond, or;
  • Any direct funding from an NIH contract signed on or after April 7, 2008, or;
  • Any direct funding from the NIH Intramural Program, or;
  • An NIH employee.

Determine applicability for your paper

Final, peer-reviewed manuscripts must be submitted to the NIH Manuscript Submission System (NIHMS) upon acceptance for publication, and be made publicly available on PubMed Central (PMC) no later than the official date of publication.

Points to consider while planning your NIH-supported paper:

• Which submission method will be used? (see below)
• What version of the paper will be made available on PMC? (see below)
• Who will submit the paper?
• When will it be submitted?
• When will the paper be made public on PMC?

What is the difference between a PMID and PMCID?

PMID: Finds abstracts/citations in PubMed

• Pubmed includes over 23 million citations and abstracts from the biomedical literature
• Each is indexed with a PMID reference number
• The full text of the article is not necessarily available to everyone
• PMIDs are not connected to the NIH Public Access Policy

PMCID: Finds papers in PubMed Central (PMC) 

• PMC is a digital archive of publicly available, free, full-text, peer-reviewed papers
• Each paper is indexed with a PMCID reference number

What version of the article should I submit? 

The NIH Public Access Policy is based on a law that requires investigators to submit "their final, peer-reviewed manuscripts" to PubMed Central. NIH will accept the final published article in lieu of the final peer-reviewed manuscript, provided that the author has the right to submit this version.

The final peer-reviewed manuscript is NOT the final published article:

• Final peer-reviewed manuscript: The Investigator's final manuscript of a peer-reviewed paper accepted for journal publication, including all modifications from the peer review process.
• Final published article: The journal’s authoritative copy of the paper, including all modifications from the publishing peer review process, copyediting and stylistic edits, and formatting changes.

See here for other FAQs about the NIH public access policy.

How do I stay copyright compliant?

Before you sign a publication agreement or similar copyright transfer agreement, make sure that the agreement allows the paper to be posted to PubMed Central (PMC) in accordance with the NIH Public Access Policy. The Open Policy Finder is another tool to determine the publishing policy for journals and publishers.

The NIH requires all articles that fit the criteria above to be submitted to PubMed Central and be given an PMCID. There are two ways to do this however we STRONGLY recommend you use self submission, to ensure timely compliance. 

• Self submission - The author is responsible for the submission process through the NIH Manuscript Submission system (NIHMS)

The other options rely on the publisher to submit to PMC. PMC maintains a list of journals with active agreements to deposit all articles in PMC. Use caution when following this option and confirm with the publisher that they are able to perform this function in accordance with the new policy.

• Publisher submission - The journal publisher will automatically submit the article on the author's behalf to PMC. See this overview of submission methods.

According to the NIH, they will hold processing of non-competing continuation awards if publications arising from grant awards are not in compliance with the Public Access Policy.

Authors should use the My Bibliography feature within MyNCBI to monitor Public Access compliance for all the applicable papers that you author or arise from your NIH award.  Note, your MyNCBI must be linked with your eRA Commons account in order for this feature to work. Linked accounts are essential as they are the only way to tie references to annual progress reports (RPPR).

See the MyNCBI / Sciencv guide for more information on using MyNCBI to manage your publications, prepare biosketches and assign delegates.

• NIH public access policy in brief
• Full 2024 NIH public access policy NOT-OD-25-047
• History and development of the NIH public access policy

Q: My journal publisher claims that I’m not allowed to file in PMC until 12 months have passed. Does that mean I’m exempt from the new rule? 

A: If the final published article cannot be deposited by time of publication, the NIH policy requires filing the Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) – the Word document that comes after peer review but before publisher contributions such as copyediting, layout, and design work. A statement acknowledging federal funding must be added to the AAM before filing the AAM. 

Q: I published my work on a preprint server that ingests into PMC. Am I in compliance? 

A: Maybe, the NIH policy requires the Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) version be made available in PMC. It is not in compliance if the preprint is a version prior to peer review. Be aware, some journals prohibit the sharing of the AAM on preprint services. 

Q: What could happen if I do not comply? 

A: Non-compliance may lead to a delay or loss of funding. You can monitor your compliance in the MyNCBI application.