NOTICE: The NIH Public Access Policy has been updated. The new policy applies to all manuscripts from NIH-funded research accepted to peer-reviewed journals on or after July 1, 2025. It requires that Author Accepted Manuscripts accepted for publication in a journal be submitted to PubMed Central upon acceptance for publication, for public availability without embargo upon the Official Date of Publication.
Read more about the updated NIH Public Access Policy here.
See HSLIC's blog post on the new NIH Public Access Policy.
Note: The previous 2008 Public Access Policy will still apply to manuscripts from NIH-funded research accepted for publication prior to July 1, 2025.
The NIH Public Access Policy ensures that the public has access to the published results of NIH funded research. It requires scientists to submit final peer-reviewed journal manuscripts that arise from NIH funds to the digital archive PubMed Central upon acceptance for publication.
To help advance science and improve human health, the Policy requires that these papers are accessible to the public on PubMed Central without embargo upon the official date of publication.
Policy details are available.
FAQs about the NIH Public Access Policy
Most scholarly information enters Open Access through one of two methods:
1) Open Access Gold: publication in an open access journal, also known as Open Access Gold. Examples of Gold OA include PLOS (Public Library of Science) and BioMed Central.
2) Open Access Green: deposit article (aka "self-archiving") in an institutional repository, author's website, or other archival location. UNM's institutional repository is the Digital Repository.
Here's a visual to explain the difference:
The above graphic is created by Darren Chase at the Stony Brook University Library and licensed CC BY-NC 4.0.
Please note that Sherpa RoMEO is now JISC Open Policy Finder.
Gold open access means that a publication is immediately provided in open access mode through a high-quality open access publication channel, that is, an open access journal. In this case, the publisher is responsible for providing the article in open access mode immediately. The publisher may charge an open access fee (article processing charge).
Hybrid open access refers to a combination of subscription-based and free-of-charge publishing. This means that the author pays a fee (APC) determined by the publisher to make the article freely available. Otherwise the journal is only available to readers who have paid the subscription fee. Some hybrid journals allow for Green Open Access publishing in a researcher's institutional repository or on their own webpage. Sites like Jisc Open Policy Finder can help researchers identify the Open Access policies of thousands of journals.
Diamond / Platinum OA Journals refer to open access journals that don't charge any author fees (APC - Article Processing Charges). They are usually financed by a university or research organization.
Bronze refers to content in paywalled journals that is made freely available by the publisher. This may be done for publicity or to share important research. The licensing and author rights on this type of open access publishing is questionable.
Article Processing Charges (APCs): APCs are paid by authors (often through grant funding). They are used by open access journals in lieu of subscription fees to support the cost of publishing and may generate revenue for the publisher.
Embargo: A period of time set by the publisher in which an academic article cannot be deposited into an institutional or other open access repository.
Predatory Publishers: Predatory publishing is an exploitative academic publishing business model that involves charging publication fees to authors without providing the editorial and publishing services associated with legitimate journals.
Publisher Policy: Publishing companies often have policies related to where and when authors can share versions of their articles.
Paywall: A paywall is a virtual "wall" behind which journal articles exist that someone must pay a fee to access. For researchers affiliated with an academic or research institution, this fee is often paid for by the institution in a subscription-based model.
Pre-Print: A draft of an academic article before being submitted for peer review. Typically, the version first submitted to a journal.
Post-Print: The final draft of an academic article after peer review but before copy-editing.
Publisher Version/PDF: The version of an academic article that is formatted for publication in a journal and/or online.
Repository: Institutional, governmental, disciplinary or other archive that hosts scholarly research.
Articles from open access journals are "born digital" documents. Usually no print copy is produced, even for archival purposes. Some OA journals use electronic archival programs like LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) or CLOCKSS (Controlled LOCKSS) to help ensure that articles are accessible even in the event of a publisher server failure.
LOCKSS works by allowing institutions that subscribe to a journal (usually libraries) to archive a copy on a specially configured server. Under a traditional for-profit publishing model enforced by license agreements that transfer intellectual property rights to the publisher, negotiating permission to use LOCKSS can be a challenge. However, open access publishers - especially those that use Creative Commons - are in an ideal position to take advantage of LOCKSS.
CLOCKSS is a not-for-profit dark archive that preserves scholarly content to ensure its long-term availability. Publishers deposit their content into the secure CLOCKSS archive, where it remains inaccessible—“dark”—unless a formal trigger event occurs, such as a publisher ceasing operations or content becoming otherwise unavailable. When triggered, the archived content is released as open access under a Creative Commons license, making it freely available to the global community. This controlled approach ensures both preservation and equitable access when content is at risk of being lost.
While OER is a form of open access publishing, not all open access publishing outputs are considered OERs. Here is a chart to help distinguish between the two forms.
Feel free to make a copy or re-use this page as long as you credit UNM HSLIC.
This guide was created by a Health Sciences Library and Informatics Center staff member and is licensed by the Health Science Library and Informatics Center of the University of New Mexico under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.
