U.S. Federal Public Access Policies
Essential information:
By the end of 2025, all federal funding agencies were required to implement plans to make the articles and data resulting from funded research publicly available at the time of publication, no embargoes periods allowed. Data management plans are also required for most funding agency proposals.
Agency requirements:
We provide a brief overview here of the public access requirements of the main agencies for which MSU receives funding. Please see the SPARC Core Elements of Federal Public Access Policies for additional information or from other agencies. Guidance on how to comply is also available from MSU Sponsored Programs. Additionally, MSU Libraries has created a brief checklist to help authors understand how to comply with the NIH policy.
When a data repository isn’t specified, researchers should use the most appropriate data repository that aligns with the Desirable Characteristics of Data Repositories for Federally Funded Research (pdf). If you have questions about data management, please see our Research Data Management Guidance page.
| Agency | Article requirements | Data requirements | Effective date |
|---|---|---|---|
| DOD - Dept. of Defense (pdf) | Submit upon acceptance to Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) | TBD | TBD |
| DOE – Dept. of Energy (pdf) | Submit upon acceptance to OSTI via E-link and DOE will make available in PAGES | Data associated with article made available by publication date, all other data made available in a timely manner. No specific repository required. | October 1, 2024 for articles and October 1, 2025 for data |
| NIH – National Institutes of Health | Submit upon acceptance to PubMed Central via NIHMS | Data associated with article made available by publication date, all other data made available by the end of the award. No specific repository required. | July 1, 2025 for articles and January 25, 2023 for data |
| NSF – National Science Foundation | Submit to NSF PAR by publication date | Data associated with article made available by publication date, all other data made available in a timely manner. No specific repository required. | January 22, 2026 |
| USDA – US Dept. of Agriculture | Submit to PubAg by publication date | Data associated with article made available by publication date, all other data made available by the end of the award. No specific repository required. | April 7, 2026 |
For authors/researchers:
Authors must carefully read the author submission guidelines for their chosen journals to ensure the journal will allow publication under terms that adhere to the agency’s policy. There are three options:
- Choose to publish traditionally, that is, not gold open access, so authors must ensure before submission that their chosen publisher will allow the deposit of the author-accepted manuscript into a repository without embargo (this is called green open access). Some journals allow this for free, and some journals charge additional fees for this. These fees have different names, such as, “early release fee”, “immediate open access fee”, or “article development charge.” These fees are charged to release an article published in a traditional/subscription-only journal or non-gold open access journal without an embargo into a public repository to meet agency public access requirements.
- Choose to publish gold open access by taking advantage of the many open access publishing agreements available through the MSU Libraries. These agreements allow authors to be in compliance with agency public access policies at no additional charge to authors.
- Choose to publish gold open access using the author’s own funds to pay the charges. Gold open access articles are published open access with no embargo and therefore meet agency public access policies.
Note: You may have heard or read that, under the Government Use License, depositing Author Accepted Manuscripts in agency repositories (e.g., PubMed Central, DOE PAGES, or NSF PAR) to comply with federal public access requirements does not require payment to the publisher or publication of the article as gold open access. While this is generally true, researchers are responsible for carefully selecting publication outlets and reviewing publisher agreements to ensure they can comply with these requirements.
MSU recommends that researchers carefully consider publication agreements prior to submission. If a researcher chooses to submit an article to a publisher that requires fees to provide immediate (zero embargo) public access, that decision is at their discretion. In such cases, researchers are responsible for complying with the terms of any agreement that they sign, including the payment of applicable fees. Failure to adhere to these contractual obligations may result in consequences such as breach of contract claims or referral of unpaid fees to collection agencies.