NIH Public Access: Managing Compliance

• A PubMed Central reference number (PMCID) is required to demonstrate policy compliance.

• Beginning July 1, 2025, the policy mandates that the author's accepted manuscript (AAM) be submitted to PubMed Central immediately upon acceptance for publication (i.e., informally, that window of time between AAM acceptance and the publication of the final published article).

• Beginning July 1, 2025, the policy removes the previous 12-month embargo period for public access to manuscripts of NIH-funded research.

• Compliance with the NIH Public Access Policy is an institutional responsibility.

• Failure to provide evidence of compliance with the policy in an application, proposal or report is a violation of the terms and conditions of the NIH award.

• Noncompliance with the policy may be considered 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 policy.

When linked to an eRA Commons account, My Bibliography allows eRA Commons users who have awarded grants in their portfolio to do the following:

• Check to see whether their publications are compliant with the NIH Public Access Policy
• Start the compliance process
• Associate their publications to NIH extramural awards