Public Access Policies for Federally Funded Research

When will my research be impacted?

The 2022 OSTP memo requires that all agency policies must be in effect by December 31, 2025. It’s likely that most federal agencies will take the full time allotted to revise their policies and procedures. Expect any research projects receiving funding in 2025 or beyond to be impacted by the new policies developed by your funding agency in response to the memo.  

Does this new memo require me to publish my research as open access?

Not necessarily. Publishing manuscripts and data as open access is just one way to provide immediate accessibility. Another way is to share the final manuscript in a repository specified by the funding agency (for example, PubMed is NIH's designated repository) or a repository that is managed by a trusted institution (for example, Harvard Dataverse).

However, depending on the publisher's self-archive policy, authors may not be able to share the final manuscript without embargo. If an embargo is required by the publisher, you might consider selecting a different publisher or opting for open access publication.  Keep in mind that publishing open access may involve an Article Processing Charge (APC). To learn more about APCs, visit this guide:

While we await further clarification on these policy developments from federal agencies and responses from publishers, please feel free to contact us with any questions you may have:

• For inquiries regarding Open Access funder mandates, please contact our Scholarly Communication Librarian, Emily Johnson, at Emily.Johnson@utsa.edu. 
• For questions regarding research data funder mandates, please contact our Information Specialist for Open Science, Rachel Davis, at Rachel.Davis2@utsa.edu.

How do I know if my funding agencies fall under this new policy?

The new memo directs that while all federal funding agencies will be subject to this new policy, the individual agencies will have discretion in policy development. You can find a list of the federal agencies that award grants at Grants.gov here:

Are there any existing policy examples that I can review to see what a public access policy looks like?

Yes. You can find a list of current examples at Science.gov: