Overview/Statement
Directed by the White House Office of Science, Technology, and Policy, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other federal funding agencies are updating their policies for sharing funded scholarship and research data. Effective in 2025 and 2026, most agencies will require awardees to immediately share the accepted manuscript of peer-reviewed journal articles resulting from federally funded research.
Agencies are requiring public access to journal articles, not open access. Public access refers to making a version of the work freely available to read but does not require authors to pay for an open access option or open license. In fact, compliance may require more than publishing open access, such as submitting the accepted manuscript in an agency-approved repository.
Agencies are also requiring researchers to share underlying data, adhering to the professional and ethical norms of their fields. Data associated with manuscripts is required to be freely available at the time of publication.
How the Libraries Support
The Libraries facilitate and invest in efforts to broadly share the results of research at UF, and we applaud the growing list of publishers establishing affordable or zero-cost pathways to public access compliance.
Publisher agreements for Open Access
For authors who choose to publish open access and are asked to pay a fee, the Libraries partner with a range of publishers to pass on cost savings. In most cases, this comes in the form of a percentage discount on the article processing charge (APC); in other cases, all publications from UF authors may be published at no cost due to the Libraries’ publisher agreements. Because the Libraries are not allocated additional funding to cover the costs of open access publishing, we are able to enter into these agreements only when they do not incur costs beyond that of a traditional subscription.
The Libraries maintain a frequently updated list of publisher agreements and discounts.
Expertise
The Libraries have many experts to answer your public access, open access, data sharing, and author rights questions. Email questions or comments to LIB-PublicAccess@ad.ufl.edu.
UF Resources
- Open Access Publishing May Be Expensive. Public Access is Not.
- UF Open Access Publisher Agreements & Journal Search Tool
- NIH Public Access Policy: How to Comply
- Academic Research Consulting & Services (ARCS)
From the Field
Update from Federal Agencies
Tracking Public Access Policies
- CHORUS is tracking U.S. federal agencies Public Access Plans and their requirements.
https://www.chorusaccess.org/resources/us-agency-public-access-plans-details/ - SPARC Publication and Data Sharing Requirements by Federal Agency The non-profit open access advocacy organization, SPARC, maintains a list with links to all federal agency publication and data sharing requirements.
Preparing Data to Share
- FAIR Data Principles
- Best practices for sharing data in findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable ways.
Questions?
Contact us at LIB-PublicAccess@ad.ufl.edu.