All author-accepted peer-reviewed manuscripts originating from work funded in whole or in part by the NIH must now be deposited into the NIH Manuscript Submission System (NIHMS) for public availability on the Official Date of Publication. This is required by the NIH Public Access Policy. There is no longer a 12-month embargo option. The author-accepted version is the accepted, complete manuscript, prior to typesetting and stylistic edits for publication by the journal.
Although authors retain the right to copyright their work, the Federal agency reserves a royalty-free, nonexclusive, and irrevocable right to reproduce, publish, or otherwise use the work for Federal purposes and to authorize others to do so. This includes the right to require recipients and subrecipients to make such works available through agency-designated public access repositories.
The Public Access Policy applies to any manuscript accepted on or after December 31, 2025, supported by grants active on or after July 1, 2025. Authors can check the Jisc Open Policy Finder and the PubMed Central Journal List to view publication policies.
Many journals allow the author-accepted manuscript to be deposited in NIHMS upon acceptance and publicly available on the date of publication, but some require Open Access Publication for access outside of the journal. The NIH allows reasonable publication fees to be budgeted in the grant budget. The NIH recommends that authors include a statement in the publishing agreement for transparency such as: 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.
It is important to note that Open Access is not equivalent to Public Access. Compliance requires that the author-accepted manuscript be made available in PubMed Central as described above. Authors should inquire as to whether the journal will do this or if the author must post the manuscript.