NIH Public Access Policy

As of July 1 2025, the 2024 update to the NIH Public Access Policy has been put into effect. It requires that accepted peer-reviewed manuscripts stemming from NIH funding be submitted to PubMed Central upon acceptance to be made publicly available immediately upon publication. There are no embargoes allowed under this new policy, and this applies to any manuscripts accepted for publication on or after July 1, 2025 regardless of when the award was originally made as long as the award was not closed prior to July 1, 2025. For awards closed prior to July 1, 2025, the 2008 policy that allows a one-year embargo is still in effect.  

The primary distinction between the 2008 policy and the 2024 update is that publication embargoes are no longer permitted, allowing for quicker public access to research.

The 2024 NIH Public Access Policy applies to any Author Accepted Manuscript accepted for publication in a journal, on or after July 1, 2025, that is the result of funding by NIH in whole or in part through:

• A grant or cooperative agreement, including training grants,
• A contract,
• An Other Transaction,
• NIH intramural research, or
• The official work of an NIH employee.

The NIH Public Access Policy applies regardless of:

• Whether the NIH-funded principal investigator or project director is an author, and
• Whether non-NIH funds contributed to developing or writing the Author Accepted Manuscript.

Submission of a manuscript to PubMed Central remains free and any fee requested for such submission is not an allowable cost. Authors are not required to pay Article Processing Charges (APCs) to comply with the policy.

While Lehigh University Libraries does have a number of read-and-publish agreements that subsidize APCs and provide for public access to articles via a publisher's website, these agreements do not replace the requirement to deposit publications to PubMed Central.

Non-compliance with the Policy, including failure to acknowledge federal funding in the manuscript, may be considered when making future funding decisions for the grantee or cause a delay in the continuation of non-competing grant awards.

For questions related to author’s agreements, open publishing, or otherwise making your work publicly accessible, contact Assistant University Librarian for Instruction and Outreach, Jasmine Woodson.  

For questions related to grant writing, contact Director of Research Development, Kate Bullard.  

For questions related to grant administration, contact your Contract and Grants Specialist in the Office of Sponsored Research and Projects (OSRP).

For questions related to data management sharing plans, contact the LTS Data Management Support Team.