Office of Research Administration

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) passed its initial Public Access Policy in 2008. The 2008 Policy was replaced by the 2024 Policy, effective July 1, 2025.

All peer reviewed articles arising from National Institutes of Health funds are required to be submitted to PubMed Central (PMC) for public access. PMC is a free, full-text repository of biomedical and life science journal literature. PMC is different from PubMed, which contains references and abstracts only.

The 2024 policy applies to any journal manuscript that:

The National Institutes of Health Public Access Policy, is an open access mandate established by NIH in 2008 and updated in 2024. The updated 2024 policy applies to final peer-reviewed manuscripts reporting NIH-funded research that are accepted for publication on or after July 1, 2025. These manuscripts must now be immediately deposited in NLM's digital archive, PubMed Central, without an embargo period. The previous 2008 policy applies to final peer-reviewed manuscripts reporting NIH-funded research that were accepted for publication between April 7, 2008 and June 30, 2025.

This requirement applies to any NIH direct funding, including grants, contracts, training grants, subcontracts, etc.

Anyone submitting an application, proposal or progress report to NIH must include the PMCID number when citing applicable articles that arise from their NIH-funded research.

Brandeis authors and investigators must simultaneously comply with the National Institutes of Health policy and with copyright law. To do so, authors should work with the publisher before any rights are transferred and should avoid signing any agreements with publishers that do not allow the author to comply with the NIH public access policy. Additionally, Brandeis University downloads from PubMed Central the Brandeis-authored articles, once they are made public, for inclusion in the university's institutional repository. Therefore, Brandeis authors and investigators also should retain the right to deposit a copy in the repository.

On submission, be sure to notify the journal that the article arises from NIH-funded research and that a copy will be deposited in the Brandeis institutional repository as well.

As of May 25, 2008, National Institute of Health applications, proposals and progress reports must include the PubMed Central reference number when citing an article that falls under the policy and is authored or co-authored by the investigator, or arose from the investigator's NIH award. 

When you submit a manuscript to NIH, you receive a NIHMS ID number. Once the article is available in PubMed Central, it is assigned a PMC ID number. Search PubMed Central to find the number. (Do not search PubMed for this information nor include the PMID number.)

• Copyright-related information from Brandeis Library

• Journals that submit all NIH-funded final published articles to PubMed Central

• National Institutes of Health Public Access Policy

• PubMed Central paper submission methods

• Open policy finder (find permissions normally given as part of each publisher's copyright transfer agreement)

• Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition

• Brandeis Library journal agreements which provide NIH manuscript submission for open access articles