Effective July 1, 2025, the NIH Public Access Policy mandates the public availability of final peer-reviewed manuscripts that result from funding provided, in whole or in part, by the NIH. It eliminates the previous embargo period to expedite the dissemination of research findings via PubMed Central, a free full-text archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature at the U.S. National Institutes of Health's National Library of Medicine (NIH/NLM).
The Policy applies regardless of whether the NIH-funded principal investigator or project director is an author and regardless of whether non-NIH funds contributed to developing or writing the Author Accepted Manuscript.
🆕 Scope and Key Requirements:
Free Compliance: Authors do not have to pay a fee to comply with the Policy.
Author Accepted Manuscript: The Policy applies to the Author Accepted Manuscript, or author’s final version that has been accepted for publication in a journal that meets NIH’s criteria.
PubMed Central: Authors must submit the Author Accepted Manuscript to PubMed Central upon acceptance for publication.
No Embargo: Author Accepted Manuscripts deposited in PubMed Central must be made publicly available no later than the article’s official date of publication, eliminating the previous 12-month embargo.
Effective Date: The Policy applies to any Author Accepted Manuscript resulting from NIH funding that has been accepted for publication on or after July 1, 2025. Upon the Effective Date, this Policy replaces the one from 2008.