The NIH Public Access Policy ensures that the public has access to the published results of National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded research. This policy aims to enhance the availability of scientific discoveries funded by public resources.
On April 30th, 2025, NIH released the following:
Revision: Notice of Updated Effective Date for the 2024 NIH Public Access Policy
NIH’s default position is maximum transparency regarding research and research findings. This Notice updates the Effective Date of the 2024 NIH Public Access Policy, NOT-OD-25-047, to July 1, 2025 at which time it will replace the 2008 Public Access Policy. All other aspects of the Policy remain the same. The Policy will continue to apply to any Author Accepted Manuscript accepted for publication in a journal that is the result of funding by NIH in whole or in part through a grant or cooperative agreement, including training grants, a contract, an Other Transaction, NIH intramural research, or the official work of an NIH employee. Author Accepted Manuscripts meeting this qualification and with acceptance dates on or after July 1, 2025, are subject to the Policy.
Supplemental Guidance, at Notice NOT-OD-25-049 and Notice NOT-OD-25-048, will continue to apply. More information to assist in the implementation of the Policy will be available at: https://sharing.nih.gov/public-access-policy/.
More information will follow regarding these changes and processes.
Background
Since 2008, the NIH has required investigators to submit their final peer-reviewed journal manuscripts, which result from NIH funds, to the digital archive PubMed Central. Under the previous policy, these papers were required to be accessible to the public on PubMed Central no later than 12 months after publication.
Key Changes in 2024 Public Access Policy
In August 2022, the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) issued a memorandum instructing all federal agencies to establish policies that enable immediate, embargo-free access to funded research. In response, the NIH has introduced a new 2024 Public Access Policy, which will come into effect on July 1, 2025. This new policy eliminates the 12-month embargo period previously allowed, ensuring that funded research becomes immediately accessible to the public.
The Principal Investigator (PI) is ultimately responsible for ensuring compliance with the new 2024 Public Access Policy. This means that manuscripts must be submitted to PubMed Central immediately upon acceptance for publication.
In 2008 Congress passed the NIH Public Access Policy. In August 2022, the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) issued a memorandum updating this policy. It instructs all federal agencies to establish policies that enable immediate, embargo-free access to funded research. In response, the NIH introduced a new 2024 Public Access Policy, which will come into effect on July 1, 2025. This new policy eliminates the 12-month embargo period previously allowed, ensuring that funded research becomes immediately accessible to the public.
This policy requires that the Author Accepted Manuscript resulting from any NIH-funded research must be deposited and immediately available to the public in electronic format in PubMed Central if it meets the criteria below:
The rational behind this is to help advance science and improve human health by allowing the public to see the research.
This information above comes from NIH Public Access Policy Details. Please visit for more precise details.
Delegate (eRACommons) - appointed person can perform tasks in your account.
Delegate (My Bibliography) - appointed person can add or remove citations to the bibliography and perform other functions.
Embargo – a period of time set by a publisher that restricts non-paid access to a publication. After this time period an article can be freely accessible to the public.
Finding a journal’s compliance and embargo policies can be a difficult task. The best way to find this is to go to the journal’s website and check the “Instructions for Authors” section. Look for the keywords Public Access, Compliance or Embargo. Another option is to get in contact with the editor of the journal.
eRACommons (electronic research administration) - an online interface principal investigators, trainees and post-docs at institutions/organizations can access and share administrative information relating to research grants.
My Bibliography - reference management tool within PubMed that helps the user save personal publications (journal articles, books/chapters, patents, presentations and meetings) directly from PubMed or, if not found there, to manually enter citations using My Bibliography templates. eRA commons users can sign in to My Bibliography with their eRA Commons login to track compliance with the NIH public access policy and report papublications to NIH. These two systems will share publication information but only if use eRACommons login. See also Other Citations.
My NCBI - tool that retains user information and database preferences to provide customized services for many databases operated by NCBI, including PubMed, PubMed Central and SciENcv. It allows you to save searches, select display formats, filtering options, and set up automatic searches that are sent by e-mail. It includes the bibliography management system My Bibliography.
NIH Manuscript Submission System (NIHMS) – online tool for authors and publishers to deposit electronic version of peer-reviewed final manuscripts for inclusion in PubMed Central. Publications in the NIHMS are assigned an identifier (NIHMSID). The NIHMS has a video overview, illustrated submission tutorials and an FAQ.
Other Citations – alternative reference management tool to My Bibliography within NCBI but is a separate collection of citations in My NCBI. Its features and operations are identical to My Bibliography. This alternative is offered to NIH principal investigators to use to track and report publications that they did not author, but arose from their NIH award.
The above definitions come from the NIH.
PubMed Central (PMC) – freely accessible database of publications that must comply with the NIH Publication Access Policy NIH grants.
PMID – the unique reference number assigned to a publication that has been entered into PubMed.
PMCID - PMC ID is a unique reference number assigned to a publication that has been entered into PMC to comply with the NIH Public Access Policy.
