NIH Public Access Policy

2024 NIH Public Access Policy - now in effect

NIH released an updated Public Access Policy on December 17, 2024, originally planned to go into effect in December 2025.

The 2024 NIH Public Access Policy is now in effect as of July 1, 2025 at which time it replaced the 2008 Public Access Policy. The 2024 NIH Public Access Policy applies to any Author Accepted Manuscript accepted for publication in a journal, on or after July 1, 2025.

The updated policy requires the submission of an electronic version of the Author Accepted Manuscript to PubMed Central upon its acceptance for publication for public availability without embargo upon the Official Date of Publication.

The UC Office of Communication has also published information on the change: Guidance on the Revised NIH Public Access Policy, Effective July 2025.

Guide updates

This guide has been updated to reflect the 2024 NIH Public Access Policy. As new information about the implementation of the policy becomes available, the guide will also be updated. If you are a UCI faculty member, staff member, or student and you have any comments or suggestions for this guide, please email rmgates@uci.edu.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) passed the original Public Access Policy in 2008. The policy requires that peer-reviewed articles on research funded by NIH be made publicly available on PubMed Central (PMC).

The Public Access page on the Grants and Funding website has the most up to date information.

PMC is a free, full text repository of biomedical and life science journal literature. PMC is different from PubMed, which contains references and abstracts only. PubMed includes references and abstracts of articles included in PMC, and references and abstracts from other sources.

The policy applies to any journal manuscript that:

1. Is peer-reviewed
   • Is accepted for publication in a journal in the NLM Catalog
2. journals not in the NLM Catalog are included if they meet certain criteria, described in the policy FAQs.
3. Arises from any direct funding from an NIH grant, cooperative agreement, or Intramural Program. Also applies to NIH employees.

The accepted manuscript must appear on PMC no later than 12 months after final publication. NIH will withhold grant money to enforce the public-access policy. See additional applicability guidelines and more Frequently Asked Questions.The Policy was passed into law by the U.S. Congress in 2009. Find further applicability guidelines in the policy FAQ.

Exempt publications include:

• Review articles, unless the article underwent peer-review.
• Books; however a book chapter published in a series indexed in PubMed does fall under the Policy if it was peer-reviewed.
• Manuscripts in non-Latin scripts (e.g. Russian, Japanese), since they cannot be processed by the NIH

Exempt publications may still be reported in NIH progress reports via My NCBI, but listed at not applicable (N/A). Find out more about reporting exempt publications in the policy FAQ.

1. Articles must be made publicly available in PMC no more than 12 months after the publication date. NOTE: NIH will be eliminating the 12-month embargo period per federal guidance on July 1, 2025. Until then, authors should continue to set the PMC public release date to 12 months after publication (unless the journal allows a shorter embargo period).
2. There are four methods of getting articles into PMC. THe method will depend on the journal.
3. NIH expects ariticles to be made compliant within three months after the official publication date. Compliance means the article has a PMCID (PMC unique identifier).
   • A PMCID is different from a PMID (PubMed identifier). See the policy website for an explanation of the difference between the two.
   • A PMCID can be assigned before the paper is released to the public on PMC. Therefore an article can be compliant prior to release.
   • After 3 months, articles without a PMCID will be non-compliant, even if the manuscript has been submitted to the The NIH Manuscript Submission (NIHMS) system. The exception is when an article is submitted via Method A, and will show as "in process".
4. Principle Investigators are required to use the My Bibliography tool in My NCBI to report their articles in NIH progress reports.
5. Even if the PI is not an author on an article, NIH holds the PI responsible for all articles resulting from their award.