NIH Public Access Policy 2026: Zero-Embargo Mandate

The NIH Public Access Policy in 2026 requires that final peer-reviewed manuscripts from NIH-funded research be deposited in PubMed Central and made publicly available on the same day the article is published, with no embargo period. One year after this zero-embargo mandate took effect on 1 July 2025, the US Government Accountability Office has warned that meeting it could push federal publishing costs toward $1 billion a year by 2030.

The NIH Public Access Policy is the National Institutes of Health’s requirement that peer-reviewed manuscripts arising in whole or in part from NIH funding be archived in PubMed Central (PMC) and made freely available to the public, without a subscription paywall or embargo delay, from the official date of publication.

• What is the NIH Public Access Policy in 2026?
• What changed under the zero-embargo mandate?
• What did GAO’s May 2026 report find?
• How should institutions adjust compliance workflows?
• Common questions about the NIH Public Access Policy

What is the NIH Public Access Policy in 2026?

The current policy traces to a 2022 memorandum from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), commonly known as the Nelson Memo after then-OSTP Director Alondra Nelson, which directed federal agencies to remove embargoes on the results of taxpayer-funded research. NIH’s implementation — the 2024 NIH Public Access Policy — took effect for manuscripts accepted for publication on or after 1 July 2025.

The policy applies to any journal-accepted manuscript resulting from NIH funding through a grant, cooperative agreement, contract, Other Transaction, or intramural research, regardless of whether the NIH-funded investigator is the corresponding author. Authors must retain the right to deposit their author accepted manuscript (AAM) in PMC by asserting the NIH Rights Statement in publication agreements, and NIH holds a nonexclusive Government Use License under 2 CFR 200.315 that survives any later exclusive-rights agreement signed with a publisher.

What changed under the zero-embargo mandate?

The defining change from the prior 2008 policy is timing, not scope. Under the 2008 rule, authors had up to twelve months after publication to make their manuscript public and up to 90 days to supply a PMCID. Under the 2024 policy, the manuscript must be publicly available in PMC on the official date of publication, with no embargo window at all.

Compliance remains an institutional responsibility. Failure to demonstrate compliance in an application, proposal or progress report is a violation of NIH award terms and can delay non-competing continuation funding.

What did GAO’s May 2026 report find?

On 21 May 2026, the Government Accountability Office published GAO-26-107738, examining whether selected federal agencies’ public access plans are consistent with OSTP guidance and how much compliance is costing the government. As reported by MedPage Today, GAO estimated that combined federal publishing charges could climb to roughly $1 billion a year by 2030 — about triple the $295 million agencies were paying in the recent baseline year the report examined.

GAO’s central finding is that zero-embargo compliance is increasingly routed through paid open-access publishing rather than free green open-access deposit, because many subscription journals will not grant immediate PMC deposit rights on standard terms. SPARC’s 22 May 2026 statement on the report pushed back on that framing, arguing that pay-to-publish models remain optional and that the underlying NIH policy itself imposes no fee — authors can comply at zero cost by depositing the author accepted manuscript directly.

NIH has already begun responding to the cost pressure. Its December 2024 guidance, NOT-OD-25-048, set out what publication costs are allowable and reasonable under NIH awards, and the agency has signalled a cap on allowable publication costs starting in fiscal year 2026 — a direct answer to the “who pays for zero embargo” question GAO’s report puts back on the table.

How should institutions adjust compliance workflows?

For research offices, the practical burden of zero embargo has shifted from a single post-acceptance reminder to a submission-stage decision point. Institutions that have adapted their workflows are typically doing the following:

• Requiring the NIH Rights Statement be inserted into every manuscript submitted for peer review before a publication agreement is signed.
• Maintaining a tracked list of publishers’ zero-embargo green open-access terms, following the model of library-maintained trackers such as Northwestern’s Galter Health Sciences Library publisher guide.
• Budgeting article processing charges into grant proposals where a subscription journal will not permit immediate deposit, rather than absorbing the cost after acceptance.
• Negotiating or expanding “Read and Publish” agreements with major publishers to reduce per-article APC exposure.
• Monitoring NIH’s allowable-cost guidance (NOT-OD-25-048) and the incoming FY2026 publication-cost cap for changes to what can be charged to an award.

Institutions should treat the AAM-deposit route as the default compliance path and reserve APC-funded open access for cases where a publisher genuinely will not permit zero-embargo green deposit — this keeps compliance costs closest to the $0 the underlying policy actually requires, even as GAO’s figures show the system-wide trend running the other way.

Common questions about the NIH Public Access Policy

What is the NIH Public Access Policy?

It is NIH’s requirement that peer-reviewed manuscripts resulting from NIH funding be deposited in PubMed Central and made publicly available without a paywall. The 2024 version, in force since 1 July 2025, removed the prior 12-month embargo entirely.

When did the NIH zero-embargo policy take effect?

The zero-embargo requirement applies to manuscripts accepted for publication on or after 1 July 2025. Manuscripts accepted before that date remain subject to the 2008 policy’s 12-month embargo and 90-day PMCID rule.

Does the NIH Public Access Policy require paying an article processing charge?

No. Authors can comply at zero cost by depositing the author accepted manuscript directly in PubMed Central. Costs arise only when a subscription publisher refuses immediate green deposit and pushes the author toward a paid open-access route.

What did the GAO report say about NIH public access costs?

GAO-26-107738, published 21 May 2026, found that federal publishing costs tied to public access compliance could approach $1 billion annually by 2030, and questioned whether agencies’ plans consistently follow OSTP guidance.

What this means going into year two

Year two of the mandate is less about awareness — most NIH-funded institutions now understand the mechanics — and more about cost governance. GAO’s report gives research administrators a federal-level evidence base for what many libraries had already observed anecdotally: that publishers control the compliance pathway, and default routing toward APCs is a policy design risk, not an inevitability. Institutions that formalise submission-stage checks and lean on the free AAM-deposit route, rather than treating open-access APCs as the default fix, are best placed to keep both their researchers compliant and their grant budgets intact as NIH’s own cost caps take shape through fiscal year 2026.

Research administrators tracking related funder mandates and contributor standards can find further research administration compliance guidance on CASRAI’s site.