U.S. Federal Funder Public Access Plans & OSTP Guidance

On August 25, 2022, the White House Office of Science and Technology (OSTP) updated its U.S. public access policy guidance to make the results of taxpayer-supported research immediately available to the American public at no cost. The 2022 OSTP Public Access Memo, “Ensuring Free, Immediate, and Equitable Access to Federally Funded Research,” expands on OSTP’s 2013 guidance to Federal agencies with over $100 million in annual research and development expenditures.

Key policy updates include:

  • Removing the optional 12-month publication embargo with plans to ensure federally funded peer-reviewed research articles are made freely available and publicly accessible by default in agency-designated repositories.
  • Strengthening the data sharing plans of the 2013 Memorandum by making data published in peer-reviewed research articles immediately available upon publication and other research data available within a reasonable timeframe
  • Supporting research integrity and scientific integrity in public access policies
  • Setting the stage for implementation through interagency coordination through the National Science and Technology Council Subcommittee on Open Science (SOS)

All federal agencies with research and development expenditures are subject to this guidance.

OSTP expects agency policies for increasing public access to scholarly publications and scientific data to be publicly posted by December 31, 2024, and to go into effect by December 31, 2025.

Agencies are expected to update and post their public access policies by December 31, 2026, with additional provisions related to supporting research and scientific integrity.

Science.gov - Public Access Plans & Guidance

Link provides agency-specific information on public access plans and guidance, including responses to the 2022 OSTP policy guidance. Please check back periodically as this list will be refreshed as agencies publicly post their new or updated public access plans and policies.

In This Section

Data Management and Sharing (DMS) Resources

For grants awarded by NSF on or after January 22, 2026, final versions of manuscripts accepted for publication after peer-review in either scholarly journals or juried conference papers or workshop proceedings (collectively referred to as author’s accepted manuscripts or AAMs) must be deposited in NSF’s Public Access Repository (PAR) at or before the time of publication. Further, such deposits are required for these products to be included as part of the annual project reporting process.

Deposit of AAMs into PAR fulfills NSF public access requirements for publications and does not require payment of special fees to publishers or other third parties. Special fees for the purpose of making published versions of record (VORs) publicly accessible are allowable costs but such payments are not required for deposits of AAMs in PAR.

For more information, please refer to the NSF site.

All peer-reviewed scholarly publications funded by CDC, regardless of the funding mechanism (e.g., grant, cooperative agreement, contract), must have an electronic version of the peer-reviewed, accepted manuscript submitted to the National Institutes of Health Manuscript Submission (NIHMS) upon acceptance for publication. For more information, please refer to the CDC site.

NIH specifically requires posting to PMC. Some of the other federal agencies have their own repositories, so it is important to check the agency’s requirements.

For assistance, please contact OSPhelp@yale.edu and reference the agency name and public access in the subject line.

Public Access and Open Access are not the same. Federal agency mandates are for Public Access, not Open Access. Public Access means that the work is publicly available for all to see, but retains the traditional copyright restrictions.

Open Access is a publishing model that provides public access to content and, depending on author licensing choice, has quite liberal terms of use. Requirements and guidance vary by agency. Some federal agencies specify the type of Creative Commons license that they would like grantees to use. NIH, however, does not require grantees to use a specific license. For more information on Creative Commons and licensing, please visit the Creative Commons webpage.

The medical library at Yale can assist.

Noncompliance with the NIH Public Access Policy may be taken into consideration by NIH regarding 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.

If publishing in a subscription journal that permits zero embargo on Author Accepted Manuscripts (AAM), the author is responsible for uploading AAM to PMC.  If publishing in an Open Access (OA) journal or OA in a hybrid journal, publishers will usually upload to PMC but authors need to check the specific journal to ensure deposit in PMC.

The policy applies regardless of whether the NIH-funded principal investigator or project director is an author and regardless of whether non-NIH funds contributed to developing or writing the Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM). The policy also applies regardless of NIH funding mechanism. AAMs reporting on projects that may not be considered research are within scope (e.g., describing an NIH-supported repository). The policy does not apply to peer-reviewed manuscripts resulting from research that is not the result of NIH funding, including peer-reviewed manuscripts resulting from research that only used NIH data, resources, or infrastructure generated or supported by NIH funds. Please refer to the NIH FAQs for more information.

Article processing charges (APCs) are allowable expenses.  However, fees assessed for the sole purpose of uploading the author accepted manuscript to PMC are not allowable. Please refer to NOT-OD-25-048 for more information.

Source: Science.gov - Open Science & Public Access