Open Access

Many Research Funders and organizations are adopting mandates that require or highly encourage researchers to make their research publicly accessible. These are known as "public" or "Open access mandates and usually refers to a policy of a research funding organization. Some funding organizations have additional policies that require research data be made public as well.

Use SPARC to find the public access policies of your funding organization.

AHRQ

• Effective Date: 12/18/2024
• Allowed Embargo Period: None
• "The AHRQ Public Access Policy requires that AHRQ-funded authors submit an electronic version of the author’s final peer-reviewed accepted manuscript to the National Library of Medicine's PubMed Central (PMC) upon acceptance by the journal, and to be made publicly available without embargo upon the Official Date of Publication. (Policy, Policy)"
• "Scientific data underlying peer-reviewed publications should be made accessible no later than the date on which the publication is first made available in print or electronic format. Scientific data underlying findings not disseminated through peer-reviewed publications should be shared by the end of the grant or contract performance period unless the recipient enters into a no-cost extension. If a no-cost extension is permitted, the recipient should share the data by the end of the extended performance period. In addition, researchers should be aware that some preprint servers may require the sharing of data upon preprint posting, and repositories storing data may similarly require public release of data upon preprint posting. (Policy, Policy)"

ASPR

• Effective Date: 10/01/2014
• Allowed Embargo Period: 12 months
• "ASPR-supported investigators will be required to submit an electronic version of their final, peer-reviewed manuscripts to PMC upon the acceptance of such manuscripts for publication, with the understanding that these manuscripts (or the final scholarly publication, if available) will be made publicly available no later than 12 months after the official date of publication. (8)"

CDC

• Effective Date: 04/08/2024
• Allowed Embargo Period: None
• "All peer-reviewed scholarly publications authored or co-authored by individuals resulting from CDC-funded activities are made freely available and publicly accessible by default via PMC and CDC Stacks without any embargo or delay after publication. (Policy, Policy: Public Availability of Manuscripts)"
• "In general, all CDC-funded public health data sets are expected to be made freely available to the public in a timely manner. If the data won’t be made available to the public, unrestricted, a strong justification is required. (Guidance, Public Health Data and the Data Management Plan (DMP))"

Dept. of Defense

• Effective Date: 2016
• Allowed Embargo Period: 12 months
• "Final peer reviewed journal articles will be available without charge following a 12-month embargo period starting on the date of publication. DoD will provide a mechanism for accepting petitions for changes to the 12-month embargo, including email, phone, and mailing address. Such petitions should present compelling, statistically based evidence that a change is necessary to promote the quality and sustainability of scholarly publications with due consideration of taxpayer rights. DoD will work with other federal science agencies to promote consistent implementation of embargoes for specific scientific fields. (9.3.1)"
• "The DoD Public Access Plan indicates that data should be made publicly accessible "at no more than incremental cost" (3). "Data assets will be stored in publicly accessible databases, where appropriate and available. They may be stored at institutional repositories or a central environment, for example the cloud. A DoD data set catalog/locator will enable discovery of the data sets" (Public Access Plan, p. 12)."

Dept. of Education

• Effective Date: 09/30/2024
• Allowed Embargo Period: None
• "The Department will make the final, peer-reviewed scholarly publication available to the public through ERIC at the same time as the publication becomes available on the publisher's website. (Regulation, 34 CFR 75 E)"
• "Grantees must make scientific data that inform the findings in a peer-reviewed scholarly publication publicly available, consistent with requirements in 34 CFR part 97, Protection of Human Subjects, and other applicable laws."

Dept. of Energy

• Effective Date: 10/01/2024
• Allowed Embargo Period: 12 months
• "After submission to OSTI, DOE PAGES will provide access to the publication record without delay. The record will include the full text of the accepted manuscript and associated metadata, thus providing immediate, equitable, and free access to the public. (Plan, Publications: Planning and Implementation). Peer-reviewed scholarly publications must be made available without any embargo or delay after publication. (Policy, DOE O 241.1C, Requirements)"
• "The Data Management and Sharing Plan (DMSP) should provide a plan for making all scientific data displayed in peer-reviewed scholarly publications resulting from the proposed research open, machine-readable, and digitally accessible to the public at the time of publication."

Dept. of Transportation

• Effective Date: 12/31/2015
• Allowed Embargo Period: None
• "This plan further requires, to the extent feasible and consistent with applicable law, policy, or agency mission, Publications to be freely available to the Public no later than 12 months following publication. (4.1)"
• ""34.4.6 DOT will maintain and publicly share a human- and machine-readable Enterprise Data Inventory at https://www.transportation.gov/data that describes all data, whether or not they are disseminated, using common core and extensible metadata. [...] 34.4.21 DOT will establish and implement processes for pre-dissemination review and evaluation of data to ensure appropriate protection, quality, documentation, and traceability of the released data and information" (Data Management Policy)."

EPA

• Effective Date: 01/02/2025
• Allowed Embargo Period: None
• "EPA does not allow a post-publication embargo period for making author manuscripts publicly accessible in PMC free of charge. (Policy, EPA Order 1000.17B, Definitions)"
• "Scientific research data underlying a journal publication are to be posted to a publicly accessible data repository by the recipient within 30 days of the date of the journal publication or the associated author manuscript becomes accessible to the public, unless 1) the dataset has already been made accessible to the public via public release or another sharing mechanism; or 2) the research data cannot be released due to one or more constraints, such as requirements to protect personal privacy, proprietary interests, intellectual property rights, national security, dual use research of concern, or when release of the data is prohibited or otherwise limited by a data use or other licensing agreement."

FDA

• Effective Date: 08/15/25
• Allowed Embargo Period: None
• "Extramural researchers need to have directly or indirectly made the final manuscript and associated metadata for such scholarly publication available in a full-text archive as soon as practicable after the formal publication date. (Policy, Responsibilities and Procedures, SMG 2126.6)"

• "The extramural researcher must usually—as soon as practicable after the formal publication date—directly or indirectly make available to the public in a data repository the scientific data underlying such scholarly publication (insofar as the data were generated by the research funded by FDA and except insofar as the disclosure is prohibited by law or other federally mandated policies). The extramural researcher must also include metadata associated with the scientific data."

IMLS

• Effective Date: 10/01/2025
• Allowed Embargo Period: None
• "Researchers must submit a machine-readable copy of the most-appropriate version of a published manuscript to the IMLS designated repository without embargo. (Policy)"
• "Researchers must deposit permissible scientific research data underlying peer-reviewed scholarly publications into a chosen repository immediately following publication. Researchers may choose the most appropriate repository."

NASA

• Effective Date: 12/02/2022
• Allowed Embargo Period: None
• "Peer reviewed manuscripts shall be deposited in NASA’s as-accepted manuscript repository and shall be made freely available by default, without any embargo or delay after the publication date. (SMD Policy, General Policies)"
• "Scientific data underlying peer reviewed manuscripts resulting from SMD-funded scientific activities shall become publicly available, to the extent allowed by applicable law and existing NASA policies, no later than the publication of the peer-reviewed article that describes it."

National Endowment for the Humanities

• Effective Date: 10/01/2025
• Allowed Embargo Period: None
• "NEH expects recipients to deposit articles in eGMS Reach no later than the date of publication, meaning the date the final published article first becomes available online. NEH will then make the article available in NEH Commons. (FAQs)"
• "Recipients must publicly share applied or scientific research datasets produced as a result of funding from a small number of NEH programs, as described in the respective Notices of Funding Opportunity."

NIH

• Effective 07/01/2025
• Allowed Embargo Period: None
• "NIH will make the publication available without embargo upon the Official Date of Publication. (Policy, Requirements)"
• "Shared scientific data should be made accessible as soon as possible, and no later than the time of an associated publication, or the end of performance period, whichever comes first. Researchers are encouraged to consider relevant requirements and expectations (e.g., data repository policies, award record retention requirements, journal policies) as guidance for the minimum time frame that scientific data should be made available, which researchers may extend. (Policy, Section VII. Managing and Sharing Scientific Data)"

NIST

• Effective Date: 10/01/2015
• Allowed Embargo Period: 12 months
• "Public access to the full text will be provided without charge no later than a 12-month embargo period following publication, although NIST reserves the right to shorten or extend the embargo period. Providing annual notice in the Federal Register to allow NIST's customers to petition for changing the embargo period in the following year, for publications in a specific field, by providing evidence that the current embargo period does not provide a public benefit and is inconsistent with the objectives articulated in the OSTP memo. (7)"
• "For data that is being made publicly available, the funding recipient is required to send descriptive information about the data (i.e., metadata associated with the data) that they collected, including a link to the published data itself when relevant, to the Federal Program Officer or designee, who enters that information into NIST’s Enterprise Data Inventory Tool for record keeping. The funding recipients themselves are responsible for depositing the data in publicly accessible locations where the data will be made available free of charge" (NIST PR 5702.01, p.3).

NOAA

• Effective Date: 10/01/2015
• Allowed Embargo Period: 12 months
• "Both intramural and extramural researchers shall be required to submit their final pre-publication manuscripts to the NOAA Institutional Repository upon acceptance of the paper by a journal. (7.2.1)"
• "Environmental data and information collected or created under NOAA grants or cooperative agreements must be made discoverable by and accessible to the general public...free of charge or at no more than the cost of reproduction, unless an exemption is granted by the NOAA Program" (NOAA Directive 10). "

NSF

• Effective Date: 01/25/2016
• Allowed Embargo Period: 12 months
• "NSF requires principal investigators who publish peer-reviewed journal articles or juried conference papers to deposit a copy of the items (either the final accepted version or the version of record, as defined in NSF's public access plan) in the NSF public access repository hosted by the Department of Energy (DOE). (FAQ, 14)"
• "Data underlying findings reported in a journal article or conference paper should be made available in accordance with publisher policies and what was laid out in the proposal DMP (6). PIs are expected to share their data, both digital and physical, "at no more than incremental cost and within a reasonable time" (7)."

Smithsonian

• Effective Date: 10/01/2015
• Allowed Embargo Period: 12 months
• "This plan requires that an electronic copy or a link to a copy of the final accepted manuscript or the final publication (i.e., version of record) of each covered publication that meets the scope criteria, as well as its supporting digital research data, shall be submitted to one or more Smithsonian-managed or Smithsonian-approved repositories either twelve months or another negotiated embargo period following official publication date unless a demonstrated special circumstance prevents the covered publication or supporting digital research data from being made publicly available. (5)"

USAID

• Effective Date: Currently in Effect
• "USAID staff, as well as contractors and recipients of USAID assistance awards (e.g. grants and cooperative agreements), must submit any Dataset created or collected with USAID funding to the DDL in accordance with the terms and conditions of their awards" (10)."

USDA

• Effective Date: 01/01/2016
• Allowed Embargo Period: 12 months
• "The USDA public access policy for scholarly publications will require that authors submit to the USDA public access archive system all final peer-reviewed journal manuscripts that meet the criteria once the manuscript is accepted for publication (II.A)"
• "Applicants [for USDA-NIFA funding] are encouraged to consider using platforms, catalogs, and workspaces provided by USDA (e.g., the Ag Data Commons), and include adequate funds in the budget to support data management and submission fees as required by the platforms, catalogs, etc. (DMP 2)."

USGS

• Effective Date: 10/01/2016
• Allowed Embargo Period: 12 months
• "Timely search, discovery and access to all publications subject to this plan will be provided by the USGS Publications Warehouse. USGS series publications (including historical publications) are made publicly available free-of-charge in digital form as PDF for download through the Warehouse immediately upon public release. All other scholarly publications by USGS authors are cataloged in the USGS Publications Warehouse with appropriate bibliographic metadata shortly after their publication in the respective journals, and links are provided to the full text of those scholarly publications. The full text will be made available free-of-charge to the public to read, download, and analyze in digital form not later than 12 months after the official date of publication from either the publisher’s website or from USGS. In either case, USGS will maintain a full-text archive of all peer reviewed publications resulting from its research. (8.0)"
• "Scientific data when approved for release are considered USGS information products (SM 1100.1) and must comply with the appropriate USGS Fundamental Science Practices (FSP) requirements including those described in this chapter and in SM 502.4" (SM 502.8, 5.A).

Veterans Affairs

• Effective Date: 12/31/2015
• Allowed Embargo Period: 12 months
• "Investigators are responsible for depositing manuscripts in PubMed Central, operated by the National Institutes of Health's National Library of Medicine (NLM), upon the manuscripts' acceptance for publication. (VA Public Access)"