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With the end of 2024, some federal agencies released updates to policy in guidance providing more details on their implementation of the Office of Science and Technology Policy Nelson Memo that requires articles based on federal grants to be made available to the public without cost or embargo. The Department of Energy has created a useful tracker for many agency plans.
National Institutes of Health
The National Institutes of Health released a new Public Access Policy in December. The new policy requires researchers funded by NIH grants to make the accepted manuscript of a published article available immediately upon publication, eliminating the currently-allowed 12 month embargo. The new policy takes effect for any article submissions accepted after December 31, 2025. This policy was developed in response to the Office of Science and Technology Policy “Nelson” Memo from 2022, which directed all research funding agencies to make funded research immediately available.
One of the biggest issues around the new policy is the question of cost. NIH asserts that complying with the policy costs researchers nothing, as researchers only have to submit their manuscripts to the government, which is free. Also, no specific licensing requirement is needed – the NIH emphasizes that this is public access, not open access. Compliance may technically be free, but researchers could still face costs. Some publishers do not currently allow articles to be made available without the payment of an article processing charge. Some of these charges are allowable to be covered by grants funds. The NIH will not cover charges from publishers solely to comply with the new policy. Journals must treat all articles the same. The NIH also did not put a specific dollar amount as to what a ‘reasonable’ cost was.
This policy change has been in the works for a while, but was notably announced weeks before a new administration starts. This was released as a “Policy” and not as a regulation; however, it could still be eligible to be rescinded by Congress via the Congressional Review Act, if the Government Accountability Office deems it qualifies as a rule. There is also a question of what happens to the OSTP memo when the new administration takes office.
National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation also put its changes in guidance form, including the new language in its Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide. The guide reiterates the point that submitting to the NSF system is free, but that grant recipients can use awards to pay publishers to allow making the Version of Record available, a long way of saying that awards can be used for Article Processing Charges.