NIH Public Access Policy FAQ

Step-by-step actions to comply with the NIH Public Access Policy:

• Authors must choose eligible journals. 

• Authors should inform journals of their obligations and must provide appropriate acknowledgement of NIH funding. 

• Authors must submit the Author Accepted Manuscript for deposit in PubMed Central. (If a journal submits an appropriate version of the journal article on behalf of the author, the author is still responsible for compliance.) 

• Authors must permit the NIH to make their manuscripts available from PubMed Central. 

• Authors must ensure the manuscript be publicly available from PubMed Central no later than the article’s official date of publication. 

Still have questions? Get guidance at Harvard:

• NIH Public Access Policy compliance & NIH Manuscript Submission (NIHMS): Publishing and Data Services at Countway Library

• Journal publisher policies, licenses, and publishing agreements: Open Scholarship and Research Data Services at Harvard Library