Public Access to Federally Funded Research: Basics and Beyond

Research produced under grants made by all 400+ federal agencies after their policies go into effect (no later than 12/31/25) must be made immediately available without cost to the public through the repository designated by the agency. This includes the author accepted manuscript, that is the final manuscript revised after peer review, and its associated data. Some agencies may also choose to include book chapters, editorials and conference proceedings under their guidelines. The author(s) (ORCiD) and the research outputs (DOIs) must have persistent identifiers.

• What - author-accepted manuscripts and associated data produced, either in part or in full, from grants awarded by any federal agency.
• When - immediately upon publication for grants awarded after the agency's public access policy goes into effect (no later than 12/31/25).
• How - at no cost through the repository designated by the agency, with persistent identifiers for manuscript, data and author(s).

Each Federal granting agency has, or will by 12/31/25, issued guidance on how to comply with its public access requirements. This SPARC page details which Federal agencies:

• have public access policies in effect;
• have updated public access policies not yet in effect; and
• without updated policies.

See the SPARC directory of public access sharing requirements by Federal agency with effective date, scope, definitions and requirements:

• Publications
• Data

Non-compliance with Federal agency public access requirements may disqualify grantees from consideration for future awards by Federal Agencies.

The public access mandates are based on the Government Use License (2 CFR 200.315), also known as the Federal Purpose License (full legal analysis provided by the Authors Alliance). This gives the government royalty-free, non-exclusive, irrevocable rights to reproduce, publish or use the government-funded work "for Federal purposes." It also gives the agency the authority to authorize others to use the work. The federal purpose license has existed since at least 1976.

Notes - The federal purpose license:

• is a non-exclusive license, so the author also maintains non-exclusive rights to share their work;
• cannot be withdrawn or terminated;
• acts as a "prior license" that takes effect when the researcher signs the funding agreement, and it cannot be overridden by agreements signed later in the research lifecycle.

Federal Purpose License Fact Sheet (HELIOS)

Open access and public access are related in that they both give the public access to works at no cost to the user, and they both involve non-author parties claiming non-exclusive rights to use and share the work.

In the case of public access, the U.S. federal agency funding the research retains rights to use, share and authorize others to share an author-accepted manuscript reporting on the research and its associated data. This is a condition of the funding.

Open access is broader than public access, because it:

• involves the author sharing non-exclusive, irrevocable rights with another, non-government entity, such as a granting foundation, academic institution, or publisher; 
• may be used for scholarly works beyond articles/book chapters and data, such as protocols, code, visualizations, books, etc.
• may grant public users rights to create derivatives of the work for any purpose.
• relies on an open license, such as Creative Commons or GNU General Public License.

The University of Massachusetts Amherst Open Access Policy, ratified by the Faculty Senate in 2016, is an example of an institutional open access policy whereby the University claims non-exclusive, irrevocable, global rights to share a faculty researcher's author-accepted manuscript of a scholarly article or book chapter. The UMass Amherst Open Access Policy also gives the university "prior license" to the manuscript, and the platform for publicly sharing the work is the campus institutional repository, ScholarWorks.

See Public Access, Open Access: Outlining the Key Differences for more details.