If you have questions, please contact the Center for Scholarly Communication & Open Publishing staff or a subject librarian or specialist.
Links to information and resources on this guide will be updated as new information becomes available in response to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) memorandum on public access to federally funded research (known as the "Nelson Memo"). Please check back frequently because responses to the policy are evolving.
As of Dec. 31, 2025, new federal policies will require the results of federally funded research to be immediately (without embargo), freely, and equitably shared with the public.
All researchers who receive federal funding will be required to obtain and use a persistent digital identifier, such as an ORCID iD.
Contact the Center for Scholarly Communication & Open Publishing staff or your subject librarian with questions.
In August 2022, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) released a memorandum on public access to federally funded research (known as the “Nelson Memo”). This memo outlines new requirements that will affect both faculty and students who conduct research using federal funding. Specifically:
The goal of the Nelson Memo is to provide free, immediate (without embargo), and equitable access to research (i.e., public access) that is federally funded.
It applies to all federal agencies, including those providing funding in the Humanities & Social Sciences.
It applies to both peer-reviewed scholarly publications and underlying scientific or supporting data.
The memo recommends that federal agencies:
Describe how public access will be provided to publications, including machine-readable formats.
Describe how public access will be provided to scientific data that underlies publications.
Indicate “researcher responsibilities on how federally funded scientific data will be managed and shared.”
Allow researchers to include costs associated with complying with public access policies in grant applications.
Use persistent identifiers for research outputs, researchers, and awards.
Dec. 31, 2024: Deadline for agencies to publish final public access policies.
Dec. 31, 2025: New policies become effective no later than this date.
From the White House:
From the Association of Research Libraries (ARL):
From the Higher Education Leadership Initiative for Open Scholarship (HELIOS):
From the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC):
No, federal agencies were given a timeline to develop their plans, policies, and procedures over several years (see the timeline above), so compliance will be required after implementation. Research funded by agencies that have existing Public Access Policies (e.g., NIH) or data sharing policies will continue to be subject to existing policy until further notice.
While not directly connected to the OSTP memo, there is a new data management & sharing policy for NIH researchers, which went into effect on Jan. 25, 2023.
The memo directs federal agencies to develop policies and procedures by Dec. 31, 2024, which are to go into effect within one year after their new policies are published. It’s likely that most agencies will take the full amount of time to prepare their policies and procedures, so you can expect your research projects that receive funding in 2025 or later to be affected by any new policies or procedures that are developed in response to the memo.
The memo indicates that plans developed by federal agencies should address both “peer-reviewed publications” and “scientific data.”
Peer-reviewed publications include "peer-reviewed research articles or final manuscripts published in scholarly journals, and may include peer-reviewed book chapters, editorials, and peer-reviewed conference proceedings published in other scholarly outlets that result from federally funded research.”
Scientific data include: "the recorded factual material commonly accepted in the scientific community as of sufficient quality to validate and replicate research findings. Such scientific data do not include laboratory notebooks, preliminary analyses, case report forms, drafts of scientific papers, plans for future research, peer-reviews, communications with colleagues, or physical objects and materials, such as laboratory specimens, artifacts, or field notes." In addition, scientific data does not include data subject to legal, privacy, ethical or other similar restrictions or limitations.
The memo does not provide specific guidance about research data related to the humanities. This guide will link to agency policies and other guidance on data sharing for the humanities as it becomes available.
The memo defines public access as the “free availability of federally funded scholarly materials to the public…and is regarded as a policy term.”
Open access is a broad set of principles and practices for sharing research outputs (including publications and data), where they are freely available online and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. So open access is much broader than public access, but public access is a tool that helps achieve more openness.
In some cases, publishing in an open access journal may not meet public access policy guidelines. For example, NIH-funded research articles published in open access journals will still need to be deposited into the NIH repository PubMed Central to be compliant.
The memo directs all federal granting agencies to revise or develop public access policies, and individual granting agencies will have discretion in policy development. Grants.gov lists the federal agencies that award grants. This guide will link to specific agency policies and resources as they become available.
Science.gov has created a site to coordinate funder plans and updates to their policies here.
The following public access plans have been issued after the release of the memo. These may include draft elements or be superseded as changes occur throughout 2024.
Temple University Libraries is available to assist you with complying with new federal public access policies. Below are some ways that you can prepare for these upcoming changes:
Reach out to the Research Data Services team for help with research data management, including best practices for managing files, documentation and metadata, storage, sharing, reproducibility, and preservation.
Develop a Data Management Plan (DMP) using the DMPTool as part of your project planning for your research. Most federally funded research grants already require DMPs and many more will in the coming months.
Start using persistent identifiers (PIDs), like ORCID, for your researcher identity. It is free to register for an ORCID iD, and, because Temple is an institutional member, you can do this using your TU credentials.
Retain copies of your research, including submitted manuscripts (pre-prints), accepted/peer-reviewed manuscripts (post-prints), tables, figures, and supplemental materials. Your publication agreement may allow you to deposit a version of your work (i.e., green open access) into Temple’s institutional repository, TUScholarShare.
Receive open access publishing support by applying for article processing charge (APC) funding via the Open Access Publishing Fund or receive APC waivers/discounts through TULUP’s participation in a number of open publishing initiatives.
