The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Public Access Policy takes effect on July 1, 2025. This policy mandates that anyone who has received a grant from the NIH must deposit their research articles in PubMed Central upon acceptance for publication, for public availability without embargo upon the Official Date of Publication.
The Author’s Alliance has released an informative Q&A for Authors that addresses the accelerated implementation of this policy. Key questions addressed include:
- Researchers are currently signing agreements with publishers for publications that may be released after July 1. These agreements might still contain year-long embargo provisions that conflict with the new NIH policy. Is this a valid concern based on what you are seeing?
- What will happen for authors who want to publish with journals that do not allow for zero-embargo deposit of articles they publish?
- Some publishers are rolling out new fees for publication of articles that are subject to funder or institutional deposit requirements. Must authors pay these fees to comply with their grants?
- Do any publishers allow for zero-embargo deposit without paying an additional open access or publication fee?
- What if an author mistakenly agrees to a publication agreement that purports to restrict their ability to comply with federal public access requirements?
- What happens if an author (or their institution) finds themselves in a conflict with a publisher insistent on enforcing contractual rights to control distribution of the article?
- How can institutions proactively protect themselves and their authors from risk, either from grant agencies or publishers?
- How can Institutions support authors who find themselves in conflict with publisher policies?
For more detailed information about the NIH Public Access Policy, we encourage you to consult the Welch Medical Library NIH Public Access Policy Guide created by Nancy Shin, the Scholarly Communications Librarian at Welch Medical Library.