Navigating NIH’s Revised Public Access Policy: On-the-ground Experiences from Librarians and Researchers
Location
Online
Start Date
21-10-2025 10:25 AM
End Date
21-10-2025 11:05 AM
Description
The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) rolled out its revised Public Access Policy on July 1, 2025, in accordance with the 2022 Office of Science and Technology Policy Nelson Memo. The Nelson Memo calls on all U.S. federal funders to implement a policy requiring immediate public access to published articles and supporting datasets resulting from federal grants. On the surface, NIH’s new policy is a public good, ensuring that federally funded research outputs will no longer be held back from public access for 12 months after publication. But the implementation mechanisms of this new policy for researchers and publishers are far from perfect. Some publishers are pushing authors towards paid open access. Authors are uncertain what’s required of them and how to handle conflicts between NIH’s and the publisher’s green open access policies. At the same time, NIH has announced it plans to cap how much it will pay for open access publication charges. In this presentation, you’ll hear how two University of California (UC) campus libraries and the California Digital Library have provided guidance on the NIH policy to their author communities. We’ll share what our researchers are reporting about their experiences and how the policy is impacting libraries.
Navigating NIH’s Revised Public Access Policy: On-the-ground Experiences from Librarians and Researchers
Online
The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) rolled out its revised Public Access Policy on July 1, 2025, in accordance with the 2022 Office of Science and Technology Policy Nelson Memo. The Nelson Memo calls on all U.S. federal funders to implement a policy requiring immediate public access to published articles and supporting datasets resulting from federal grants. On the surface, NIH’s new policy is a public good, ensuring that federally funded research outputs will no longer be held back from public access for 12 months after publication. But the implementation mechanisms of this new policy for researchers and publishers are far from perfect. Some publishers are pushing authors towards paid open access. Authors are uncertain what’s required of them and how to handle conflicts between NIH’s and the publisher’s green open access policies. At the same time, NIH has announced it plans to cap how much it will pay for open access publication charges. In this presentation, you’ll hear how two University of California (UC) campus libraries and the California Digital Library have provided guidance on the NIH policy to their author communities. We’ll share what our researchers are reporting about their experiences and how the policy is impacting libraries.
