NIH Public Access Policy FAQ

Authors covered by the NIH Public Access Policy may submit to journals of their choice—whether subscription journals, no-fee open access journals, journals that condition article publication on the payment of a fee, and so forth. Hence, the Policy does not require any one business or publishing model. 

Journals must, however, meet other criteria under the Policy. If the journal is not listed in the National Library of Medicine (NLM) Catalog, it must meet all the following to be eligible: 

• Requirements for ISSN assignment; 

• Content is issued over time under a common title; 

• Is a collection of articles by different authors; and 

• Is intended to be published indefinitely. 

Also see "Can I charge publication costs to my grant budget under the NIH Public Access Policy?" in this FAQ should an author elect to publish in a venue that charges publication fees.

Contact Harvard Library’s Open Scholarship and Research Data Services or Countway Library’s Publishing and Data Services for further guidance.