The National Institutes of Health (NIH) policy requires authors "to submit final peer-reviewed journal manuscripts that arise from NIH funds to PubMed Central immediately upon acceptance for publication " as part of their Public Access Policy. Much of the content within PubMed Central, a digital repository, can be considered open access; however, content is still protected by copyright and made available under a creative commons or similar license.
The general steps for compliance with the NIH Public Access Policy are:
By 2026, all federally funded research will be required to be open access immediately. Government agencies are currently updating their open access and data sharing plans in order to conform to the new policies.
A National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) account can, among other things, help authors manage compliance with the NIH Public Access Policy. Grant awardees can link an NCBI account to their research grant management account (eRA Commons) and use this integration to determine compliance with the policy. Below are the general steps for grant awardees/authors:
A detailed description of the process along with the appropriate links and instructions is provided within the eRA Manage Publications page.
As part of the U.S. Government Open Data Policy which encourages federal agencies to promote data sharing, NIH has a long standing policy of requesting a data sharing plan for grant applications over a certain amount. A full list of NIH Data Sharing Policies by departments is available as well as an extensive list of Data Sharing Repositories for researchers.
In January 2023, a new NIH Data Management & Sharing Policy from NIH will be enforced. Grants submitted after that time will require researchers to plan for for how scientific data will be preserved and shared through the submission of a Data Management and Sharing Plan with their grant applications. More details can be found on the NIH Data Management and Sharing Overview page page.
Open Access, full text archive of biomedical and life sciences literature.