NIH Public Access Policy

The Authors Alliance released some updates to their previous guidance on the updated NIH Public Access Policy:
An Updated NIH and Publisher Guidance: What Authors Need to Know about NIH’s Public Access Policy

This update defines which manuscripts are subject to the 2024 NIH policy, how large publishers are reacting to the updated policy, and it discusses the American Chemical Society's "Article Development Charges" and how they differ from standard article production charges (APCs), and whether they may or may not be allowable costs on NIH awards.

The Authors Alliance has written a set of questions and answers to what they anticipate can be some problems that will arise when authors are negotiating their publishing contracts with journals.

They acknowledge that it will take some time to discover what issues will arise, but they offer some very good advice for several different situations that may occur, and they include some links and language from publishers and resources that are very helpful.

This guidance can be found at The NIH Public Access Policy: Q&A for Authors.

The Authors Alliance recommends that authors:

• Seek out journals that offer zero embargo deposit to a repository (in this case, PubMed Central).
• Seek out journals that are fully open access, and thus have no restrictions on repository deposit. 
• Budget for extra article processing charges for the future, to cover open access fees that will allow them zero embargo deposit (although how these fees are requested in grant proposals should be worded very carefully, since the NIH has stated that "Journal or publisher fees that arise during the course of the publication process for the sole purpose of submitting the Author Accepted Manuscript to PubMed Central are not allowable costs. Compliance with the Policy does not require the payment of an open access fee to a journal."