Compliance requirements and impact of noncompliance
To comply with the policy, the Author Accepted Manuscript to PubMed Central must be submitted to PubMed Central upon acceptance for publication and NIH granted the right to make it publicly available on the Official Date of Publication.
For journals or publishers with formal agreements with the National Library of Medicine, compliance can be met by submission to PubMed Central on the Official Date of Publication, for immediate public access.
Compliance with the Public Access Policy is mandatory. NIH may consider noncompliance with the policy in future funding decisions for the recipient institution. Non-competing continuation grant awards are subject to a delay in award processing for noncompliance with the NIH Public Access Policy.
What will happen for authors who want to publish with journals that do not allow for zero-embargo deposit of articles they publish?
Government use license
By accepting NIH funding, recipients agree to grant a license to the Author Accepted Manuscript to NIH. When submitting an AAM, authors will agree to a license similar to the Government Use License (2 CFR 200.315), which provides NIH with a royalty-free, nonexclusive, and irrevocable right to the Author Accepted Manuscripts. This explicitly grants NIH the right to make the article publicly available in PubMed Central on the Official Date of Publication.
NIH encourages authors to include a statement that indicates the Author Accepted Manuscript is subject to the NIH Public Access Policy provided in the Supplemental Guidance to the 2024 NIH Public Access Policy: Government Use License and Rights NOT-OD-25-049
“This manuscript is the result of funding in whole or in part by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). It is subject to the NIH Public Access Policy. Through acceptance of this federal funding, NIH has been given a right to make this manuscript publicly available in PubMed Central upon the Official Date of Publication, as defined by NIH.”
Costs
The NIH Public Access Policy does not require authors to pay a fee, such as an article processing charge for open access. The updated policy continues to allow reasonable publication costs as part of the project budget. Fees charged by a journal or publisher for submission of the AAM to PubMed Central are not allowable costs.
