NIH Public Access Policy

Before signing a publisher's copyright transfer or other publication agreements, be sure to retain the right to deposit in PMC without embargo. It is essential to assert that your manuscript is subject to the 2024 NIH Public Access Policy. 

Public Access Policy Requirements Related to Rights

Upon accepting NIH funding, recipients grant to NIH the right to make Author Accepted Manuscripts resulting from the funding publicly available in PubMed Central upon the Official Date of Publication, and this is affirmed via a statement in Notices of Award, in the terms of Other Transaction agreements, and in applicable contracts. 

Authors submitting Author Accepted Manuscripts to PubMed Central must agree to a submission statement as part of the standard PubMed Central manuscript submission process. Under the NIH Public Access Policy, authors submitting an Author Accepted Manuscript to PubMed Central must provide NIH with a standard license that mirrors the Government Use License. This language, included as part of this submission statement to PubMed Central, states:

“I hereby grant to NIH, a royalty-free, nonexclusive, and irrevocable right to reproduce, publish, or otherwise use this work for Federal purposes and to authorize others to do so. This grant of rights includes the right to make the final, peer-reviewed manuscript publicly available in PubMed Central upon the Official Date of Publication.” 

The language in this statement may evolve, but it includes a grant of rights to NIH to make the Author Accepted Manuscript publicly available in PubMed Central without an embargo, upon the Official Date of Publication.

Guidance for Communicating Rights in Author Accepted Manuscripts

NIH highly encourages authors to be transparent during the journal submission process by indicating to the journal or publisher that the Author Accepted Manuscript, should the Submitted Manuscript¹ be accepted, is subject to the NIH Public Access Policy, and that this means that NIH, as the funding agency, has the right to make the Author Accepted Manuscript publicly available in PubMed Central upon the Official Date of Publication. NIH does not require that authors demonstrate to NIH what was communicated to publishers.

NIH suggests that authors include the points above as a statement in the Submitted Manuscript. Such a statement may accompany the required funding acknowledgment. NIH provides the following sample language that may be included in the Submitted Manuscript and then, should it be accepted, the Author Accepted Manuscript:

“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.”