Compliance with this Policy is a statutory requirement and a term and condition of the grant award and cooperative agreement, in accordance with the NIH Grants Policy Statement. Failure to comply violates both the statute and the PI's agreement with the NIH.
Compliance with the NIH Public Access Policy is not a factor in the evaluation of grant applications. Non-compliance will be addressed administratively and may delay or prevent the awarding of funds
To comply with the policy, the Author Accepted Manuscript to PubMed Central must be submitted to PubMed Central upon acceptance for publication and NIH granted the right to make it publicly available on the Official Date of Publication.
By accepting NIH funding, recipients agree to grant NIH a license to the Author Accepted Manuscript. When submitting an AAM, authors will agree to a license similar to the Government Use License (2 CFR 200.315), which provides NIH with a royalty-free, nonexclusive, and irrevocable right to the Author Accepted Manuscripts:
“I hereby grant to NIH, a royalty-free, nonexclusive, and irrevocable right to reproduce, publish, or otherwise use this work for Federal purposes and to authorize others to do so. This grant of rights includes the right to make the final, peer-reviewed manuscript publicly available in PubMed Central upon the Official Date of Publication.”
This explicitly grants NIH the right to make the article publicly available in PubMed Central on the Official Date of Publication. The Helios Open fact sheet provides more explanation of the government use license.
NIH encourages authors to include a statement that indicates the Author Accepted Manuscript is subject to the NIH Public Access Policy provided in the Supplemental Guidance to the 2024 NIH Public Access Policy: Government Use License and Rights NOT-OD-25-049
“This manuscript is the result of funding in whole or in part by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). It is subject to the NIH Public Access Policy. Through acceptance of this federal funding, NIH has been given a right to make this manuscript publicly available in PubMed Central upon the Official Date of Publication, as defined by NIH.”
We believe that journals and/or publishers that deposit the complete contents of each issue or volume into PubMed Central as well as those with formal agreements, to deposit articles funded by the NIH, with the National Library of Medicine, compliance can be met by submission to PubMed Central on the Official Date of Publication, for immediate public access.
If you are publishing in a journal without an agreement with the National Library of Medicine you should deposit the authors accepted manuscripts upon acceptance.
When citing an article in NIH applications, proposals, and progress reports that falls under the policy AND was authored or co-authored by you or arose from your NIH award, you are required to include the PubMed Central reference number (PMCID) or the NIHMS ID number, if a PMCID has not been assigned yet. If you need help finding this number, contact the WVU LIbraries for assistance. More information on how to include this number in your citation is available at the NIH Public Access website.
