CASRAI Dictionary

Tag: public access

  • The OSTP Nelson Memo Deadline: Free Federal Research

    The 2022 memorandum from the US Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), widely known as the Nelson memo after the then-acting director who signed it, directed federal agencies that fund research to make the resulting peer-reviewed publications and their supporting data freely available to the public without an embargo. Agencies were asked to develop and implement updated public-access plans, with the milestone for full effect set for the end of 2025. This article is a neutral description of the policy and its rollout, not compliance advice.

    What the memo directed

    The Nelson memo built on earlier US public-access policy but extended and tightened it in two notable ways. First, it removed the previously permitted twelve-month embargo, so that publications arising from federal funding should be free to read immediately on publication. Second, it explicitly brought supporting research data into scope, asking agencies to ensure that data underlying published, peer-reviewed findings are made publicly accessible.

    Crucially, the memo also widened applicability. Earlier guidance had focused on the largest funding agencies; the Nelson memo applied across federal agencies that fund research, including smaller agencies that had not previously operated formal public-access programmes. Each agency was asked to publish its own implementation plan within a common framework.

    The end-of-2025 milestone

    The memo set a phased timeline. Agencies were expected to update their public-access policies and then bring them fully into effect no later than 31 December 2025. In practice this meant that, across federal science funders, publications and associated data tied to awards should be subject to immediate free-access expectations by that date.

    The most visible early mover was the National Institutes of Health, whose revised arrangement is described in our companion explainer on the NIH Public Access Policy. NIH’s removal of the embargo is a concrete instance of the broader direction the Nelson memo set for the whole federal research system.

    How agency rollouts took shape

    Because the memo delegated implementation to each agency, the rollout was not a single switch but a set of staggered agency plans sharing common principles. Typical features of agency public-access plans include:

    • Immediate access to the peer-reviewed publication, removing the prior embargo window.
    • Data sharing expectations for the data underlying the published findings, with appropriate handling of sensitive or restricted data.
    • Persistent identifiers and metadata to make outputs findable and to link publications, data and awards.
    • Designated repositories or repository criteria through which compliant deposits are made.

    Identifiers feature heavily in these plans because they make compliance auditable and outputs discoverable. For background, see our notes on persistent identifiers in the standards dictionary, which explain how DOIs and related identifiers support linking across the scholarly record.

    Why data was the harder part

    Making publications free to read is operationally well-understood, building on a decade of deposit infrastructure. Extending public access to data is more complex. Datasets vary enormously in size, format and sensitivity, and not all data can be openly shared — human-subjects data, for example, may carry privacy and consent constraints. Agency plans therefore tend to frame data sharing around the principle of being as open as possible and as closed as necessary, with documented justifications where access must be restricted.

    This is where the policy intersects with established data-stewardship principles. The expectation is generally that shared data are described with sufficient metadata to be reusable, echoing the widely cited FAIR principles (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable) referenced in our explainer on FAIR data.

    Persistent identifiers and infrastructure

    A practical thread running through agency public-access plans is the use of persistent identifiers and structured metadata. Identifiers such as DOIs for publications and datasets, ORCID iDs for researchers, and award and organisation identifiers make it possible to link an output back to the award that funded it and the person who produced it. This linking is what turns a pile of free documents into a navigable, auditable record of what public funding produced.

    That emphasis aligns the memo with infrastructure the scholarly community already uses. Our explainers on the DOI and the ORCID iD describe two of the building blocks agencies lean on. The broader point is that immediate access is not only about removing a paywall; it is about making outputs findable, attributable and connected.

    What changed for researchers and institutions

    For researchers, the practical consequence is that the funder-driven expectation of free, immediate access now extends across more agencies and now reaches data as well as papers. Award terms, data-management planning and deposit workflows reflect those expectations. Data-management and sharing plans became a more prominent part of the application and award lifecycle, prompting researchers to think early about which data will be shared, where, and under what conditions. Institutions commonly updated library guidance, data-repository support and compliance tracking in response, and many expanded research-data services to help investigators meet the data-sharing element rather than only the publication element.

    Equity and the cost question

    One theme the memo raised explicitly is equity in publishing. Removing embargoes increases free access for readers, but the costs of publishing do not disappear — they may shift, for example toward article-processing charges in some open-access models. The memo asked agencies to consider how their public-access approaches affect different communities of researchers, including those with fewer resources, so that the move to open access does not inadvertently disadvantage smaller institutions or early-career researchers who may struggle with publication fees. This is part of why depositing the accepted manuscript in a repository — a route that does not require paying a fee — remains an important compliance pathway alongside open-access journals.

    The practical upshot is that immediate access can be achieved through more than one route, and agencies have generally been careful not to mandate a single business model. The goal is free public access to the output, with flexibility in how that access is delivered.

    The bottom line

    The Nelson memo is best understood as a framework rather than a single rule: it set the destination — immediate, free public access to federally funded publications and their underlying data — and asked each agency to chart its own route there by the end of 2025. Readers seeking authoritative detail should consult each agency’s published public-access plan and OSTP’s own guidance at whitehouse.gov/ostp.

  • NIH Public Access Policy 2025: No-Embargo Free Access

    The US National Institutes of Health updated its Public Access Policy so that peer-reviewed manuscripts arising from NIH-supported research are made freely available in PubMed Central (PMC) immediately on the official date of publication, with no embargo period. The revised policy took effect in 2025 and replaced a long-standing arrangement under which deposited manuscripts could remain behind an access delay of up to twelve months. This article describes what changed and what it means in practice; it is a neutral explainer and not legal or compliance advice.

    What the policy actually requires

    Under the updated policy, authors of papers that result from NIH funding must ensure that the accepted, peer-reviewed manuscript is deposited in PubMed Central and made publicly accessible without an embargo. The central change is timing: where the earlier 2008-era policy allowed the freely available version to appear up to a year after publication, the version now in force removes that delay so the manuscript is available to readers at the point of publication.

    The requirement attaches to the funding rather than to the journal. A paper that acknowledges NIH support, or that reports work conducted under an NIH award, falls within scope regardless of where it is published. The policy concerns the author-accepted manuscript — the peer-reviewed text after revisions but typically before the publisher’s final typeset formatting — which is what is deposited and surfaced through PMC.

    Why NIH made the change

    The update aligns NIH practice with the wider US federal direction on access to publicly funded research. Federal science-policy guidance has pushed agencies toward making the results of taxpayer-funded research freely and immediately available, and the removal of the optional embargo brings the largest US biomedical funder into line with that direction. For readers tracing the policy lineage, the broader federal context is set out in our explainer on the OSTP Nelson memo.

    NIH has framed the change as advancing public access to the literature it funds and improving the speed at which findings reach clinicians, researchers and the public. The agency administers the deposit workflow through established systems rather than through any new submission portal, so the operational mechanics for authors are largely familiar.

    What changes for authors and administrators

    For investigators, the practical shift is that they can no longer rely on a publisher embargo to delay free availability. Manuscript deposit must be arranged so that the public version appears on publication. Many authors handle this through the journal’s deposit service where one exists, or by submitting the accepted manuscript themselves through the NIH Manuscript Submission system.

    • Scope check: determine whether a paper acknowledges NIH funding — that is the trigger for the policy.
    • Version control: identify the peer-reviewed accepted manuscript, which is the version deposited.
    • Timing: ensure the deposit and public-release settings reflect immediate availability rather than a delayed release.
    • Identifiers: a PMC identifier (PMCID) continues to be used to demonstrate compliance, including in progress reports and future applications.

    Research administrators frequently track compliance because a PMCID is referenced when citing prior NIH-funded work in applications and reports. Removing the embargo does not change that reporting relationship; it changes the moment at which the deposited version becomes publicly readable.

    How it interacts with publishing choices

    The policy does not require authors to publish in any particular journal or to pay an article-processing charge. Depositing the accepted manuscript in PubMed Central is a route to compliance that is independent of whether the journal itself is open access. Authors may still publish in subscription journals provided the accepted manuscript is made freely available through PMC on the publication date. For background on the underlying concept, see our plain-language note on open access in the standards dictionary.

    Because the deposited version is the author-accepted manuscript rather than the publisher’s final formatted article, the freely available copy may differ cosmetically from the version of record. The scholarly content is the peer-reviewed text; pagination, branding and final typesetting may vary.

    Rights and licensing considerations

    A frequent question concerns the rights under which the deposited manuscript is made available. Depositing the accepted manuscript in PubMed Central is a matter of public accessibility — readers can find and read it — and authors continue to navigate publication agreements with their chosen journals. Some authors retain rights to deposit the accepted manuscript through the terms of their publishing agreement, while institutions and funders increasingly encourage authors to secure such rights up front. The policy’s focus is on free public availability through PMC; the precise licensing of any individual deposit depends on the agreement between author and publisher.

    This distinction matters for reuse. Free to read is not always the same as free to reuse under an open licence. Authors who want their work to be reusable under a specific licence typically address that through their publication choices, while the funder requirement guarantees, at minimum, immediate free access for readers via PubMed Central.

    What to watch next

    Implementation detail continues to be clarified through NIH guidance, including how deposit workflows operate for different journal arrangements and how the policy is reflected in award terms. Institutions generally update internal guidance and library support services to reflect the no-embargo expectation. Many libraries offer author support to help investigators identify the correct manuscript version, complete deposits and obtain the PMCID that documents compliance. Readers seeking the authoritative text should consult NIH’s own published policy pages rather than secondary summaries, since operational specifics can be refined over time.

    The headline is straightforward: NIH-funded peer-reviewed papers are now free to read in PubMed Central from the day they are published, without the previous waiting period. For the systems and terminology behind US research funding more broadly, our CRediT contributor-role overview and funding explainers provide neutral, definitional context.