In February 2013, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) issued a policy memorandum directing federal agencies to develop policies to make the publications and data resulting from funded research freely available to the public. Many agencies included a new requirement for data management plans (DMPs) as part of the proposal process. In August 2022, the OSTP updated this requirement by December 31, 2025 all agencies funding research will update or create new policies, including those with budgets under the $100 million threshold. The new policy removes all embargo periods and requires deposit of the author-accepted manuscript (AAP) in a qualifying repository upon publication. NIH has implemented its new policy early as of July 1, 2025 (see below).

The University of Illinois Library provides consultations on article and data management planning, and compliance with these public access mandates. We are happy to work with individual grants analysts at the department level, Principal Investigators, researchers, and graduate students.

If you have questions or would like additional details about the specific policies and requirements, please contact the Research Data Service staff at researchdata[at]library.illinois.edu, Scholarly Communication and Publishing staff at scpub[at]library.illinois.edu, or contact your subject specialist.

Administration for Community Living (ACL)/ National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR)

• Implementation Plan
• (A) All peer-reviewed publications generated from ACL /NIDILRR – funded research be publicly available via PubMed Central (PMC) no later than 12 months after the official publication date. The peer-reviewed publications may be made available in either the final peer-reviewed article or final peer-reviewed manuscript format.
• (D) DMP required. Data will be submitted to publicly accessible repositories.

Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality (AHRQ)

• Policy (updated for new 2022 requirements)
• (A) Authors will be required to submit the electronic version of the author’s final peer-reviewed accepted journal manuscripts, which includes all modifications from the publishing peer review process into PubMed Central (PMC). The final published article is also acceptable where the awardee has the rights to make the published version public.
• (D) DMP required. Data will be submitted to a commercial repository.

Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR)

• Implementation Plan
• (A) Authors will be required to deposit publications in the PubMed Central database.
• (D) DMP required. In-scope digital scientific data sets resulting from research projects must be deposited in a recognized scientific data repository capable of long-term preservation of the data and open access to the public within 30 months from the creation of the data set or upon publication of a peer reviewed publication based on the data set, whichever is sooner. Additionally, a metadata document  for the data, using common core metadata, must be submitted to ASPR, and will be made publicly available on data.gov, and other appropriate sharing locations such as phe.gov. Also, new awards will not be given unless terms of previous awards are met, including the conditions detailed in data sharing and management plans.

Center for Disease Control

• Implementation Plan (January 2015)
• (A) Authors must submit final, peer-reviewed journal manuscripts to the CDC Stacks repository using the National Institute of Health Manuscript Submission (NIHMS) system, upon acceptance of the manuscript.
• (D) DMP required (Appendix B of the above linked document, will eventually be electronically fillable). Minimal data must be released at the time of article publication, with more detailed data released according to CDC standard research data release timeline; all data intended for release, regardless of publication, should be made accessible within 30 months of the end of data collection. Researchers should use the repositories available to them, including the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) or CDC WONDER; other options are under development.

Department of Defense (DOD)

• Implementation Plan
• (A) Authors must submit final, peer-reviewed journal manuscripts to the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) system upon acceptance for publication.
• (D) DMP required. Digitally formatted scientific data sets should be stored and publicly accessible to search, retrieve, and analyze; publicly releasable primary data, samples, and other supporting materials created or gathered in the course of work should be publicly accessible at no more than incremental cost and within a reasonable time.

Department of Energy (DOE)

• Implementation Plan
• (A) Discoverability and access to version of record publications will be made possible through the portal and search interface tool, the Public Access Gateway for Energy and Science (PAGES), and in cases where the publisher-hosted version of record is not publicly accessible, the DOE will provide access to accepted manuscripts in publicly accessible repositories, of which the DOE’s OSTI repository may be one.
• (D) DMP required (templates). Different offices will have different requirements for storage and public access, notably the EERE which has not yet released its requirements.

Department of Transportation (DOT)

• Implementation Plan (2015 Dec)
• Site: link
• NB: ORCID required for all researchers
• (A) Authors will be required to make available final published articles and reports in the DOT National Transportation Library (NTL) repository within 12 months of publication date.
• (D) DMP required to address the accessibility, storage, and long-term preservation of digitally formatted scientific data. These data will be inventoried in the DOT Public Data Listing.

Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

• FDA
• Guide/Policy (2015Dec)
• (A) Authors will be required to make available final published articles in the PubMed Central (PMC) database within 12 months of publication date, and the article metadata to PubMed upon publication. (Recommendation: Deposit final published articles in the PMC database within 10 business days of the final published article availability date to meet the PMC deadline)
• (D) DMP required. Researchers are expected to make research data, particularly those supporting published research, accessible consistent with the data management plan.

Institute of Education Sciences (IES)

• Public Access Policy
• Implementation Plan (Data)
• (A) Authors are required to deposit final peer-reviewed versions of articles in the Educational Research Information Center (ERIC)
• (D) DMP required for Goal 4 Effectiveness, Goal 3 Efficacy and Replication, and Networks on Critical Problems of Policy and Practice grants. Researchers are expected to make data accessible in a timely fashion and by the time of article publication in ways that protect participants.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

• Implementation Plan
• (A) Publications will be made available through a NASA-branded portal to the National Institute of Health’s PubMed Central ® (PMC) platform, following the NASA-sponsored author’s submission of an exact copy of the as-accepted manuscript or the publisher-transmitted copy of the Version of Record.
• (D) DMP required. The requirement for public access to sharable data may be met by including data with the publication as supplementary material, through NASA archives, or through other means, and means of access should be indicated in the published article. [FAQ]

National Institutes of Health

• The below list has not been fully updated with new policies in the wake of the 2022 update to the public access policy. Links that have been updated to new guidance since 2022 have a note to that effect.
• Policy (Updated and in effect July 1, 2025)
• (A) Authors must submit final, peer-reviewed journal manuscripts to PMC. 
  • Authors with questions or concerns, especially related to manuscripts already under consideration at publishers before July 1, are encouraged to consult the Authors Alliance Q&A on the policy update.
• (D) DMP required. While data may be deposited in any of the many already existing public repositories, using community standards of data collection and description, NIH is also funding the development of a data discovery index, and will continue to explore the development of a data commons.

National Institute of Standards and Technology

• Implementation Plan [PDF] (April 2015) – as applied to unclassified research projects
• (A) Authors must submit either the version of record or the final accepted peer-reviewed manuscript upon acceptance for publication, plus the associated public access archive system metadata through NIST’s PMC interface, all of which should be publicly available within 12 months of publication, although NIST reserves the right to shorten or lengthen this embargo period.
• (D) AN ‘effective’ DMP is required, which should address all digital data as defined by OMB Circular A-110, and explicitly address data that will support publications. Under the guidance provided in the Project Open Data component of OMB memorandum M-13-13, metadata for existing data should conform to the schema posted online and be submitted to the NIST Enterprise Data Inventory (EDI), which is visible at www.data.gov. NIST will continue to “track and respond to changes in digital technologies” as it develops the Common Access Platform (CAP) for data distribution. Data should be made available 12 months following publication of the associated article.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

• Implementation Plan
• Directive: (Active date, June 2016. Currently unavailable.)
• (A) Authors must submit the final accepted peer-reviewed manuscript, in an accessible format, upon acceptance for publication to the NOAA Institutional Repository. These materials must be made publicly  and freely available within 12 months.
• (D) Data Management Plan will be required. Data is defined by NOAA Administrative Order    (NAO)    212-15 and refers to “environmental data;” numerical model outputs and data collected in controlled environments are included in this definition. Data must be made available with article publication for supporting data, or within two years of collection and verification or the end end of the grant period for other data. NOAA will employ short term access solutions such as SHARE and participation in developing an interagency Research Data Commons based on FAIR principles in addition to long term preservation at NOAA data centers.

National Science Foundation (NSF)

• NSF
• Implementation Plan [Summary]
• (A) Authors must submit either the version of record or the final accepted peer-reviewed manuscript to the NSF Public Access Repository (NSF-PAR) in PDF/A format that should be available for download, reading, and analysis free of charge no later than 12 months after initial publication, with machine-readable metadata available at initial publication.
• (D) A 2-page DMP is required. “All data resulting from the research funded by the award, whether or not the data support a publication, should be deposited at the appropriate repository as explained in the DMP.”

Smithsonian Institute (SI)

• Implementation Plan:
• (A) An electronic copy or link to such copy of either the version of record or the final accepted peer-reviewed manuscript must be submitted to Smithsonian-managed or -approved repositories after a 12-month (or other negotiated) embargo following official publication date. Implementation will be managed through  Smithsonian Research Online (SRO) and Clearinghouse for Open Research of the United States (CHORUS).
• (D) DMPs are required as per Smithsonian Directive 610 (PDF). Digital research data supporting publications must be submitted via an electronic copy or link to such copy to Smithsonian-managed or -approved repositories. Data may be submitted to SRO or be deposited in an approved external, community-supported or discipline-specific repository, or via CHORUS.

US Agency for International Development (USAID)

• Inactive due to current disbanding of agency.

US Department of Agriculture (USDA)

• Implementation Plan
• (A) Effective January 2016, authors of publications accepted for publication on or after this date will submit to the USDA public access archive system (PubAg) all final peer-reviewed journal manuscripts once the manuscript is accepted for publication, or the final published article, provided the author has the right to submit the published version.
• (D) Phased approach, with mainstream implementation targeted for 2016-2017 and DMPs to be required, likely starting January 2016. USDA will support a registry of datasets, and are continuing to explore other repository options.

US Geological Survey (USGS)

• Implementation Plans and Web site (Updated July 5, 2023)
• (A) Final accepted manuscripts must be deposited in the internal USGS-only Information Product Data System repository which acts as a dark archive; be released from the publisher or the dark archive and made available for download, reading and analysis free-of-charge no later than 12 months after initial publication.
• (D) DMP is required. See guidance on the USGS website. The authoritative version of the dataset will be maintained by USGS. Once approved for release, data are made available to the public in the appropriate forms and formats free-of-charge with no embargo period.

US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)

• Implementation Plans and PMC Deposit (Updated 2015)
• (A) Authors will be required to deposit publications in the PubMed Central database upon acceptance of publication, and make available within 12 months of publication.
• (D)  Clinical Trial information will continue to be submitted to and be available online. For other types of digital research data, a DMP is required and, “VA will seek partnerships with HHS, NIH, FDA, and DoD to identify and share effective mechanisms” for public accessibility under both open and controlled access conditions.

Further information on plans and implementations:

Static document: http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1372041
Living document: http://bit.ly/FedOASummary
This information on this page is derived from a similar page created by Columbia University Scholarly Communication Program. It is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

In February 2013 the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) issued a policy memorandum directing federal agencies to develop policies to make the publications and data resulting from funded research freely available to the public. Many agencies included a new requirement for data management plans (DMPs) as part of the proposal process. In August 2022, the OSTP updated this requirement by December 31, 2025 all agencies funding research will update or create new policies, including those with budgets under the $100 million threshold. The details of these new policies are not yet known.

If your question is not addressed below, please contact Scholarly Communication and Publishing at scpub@library.illinois.edu, or the Research Data Service at researchdata@library.illinois.edu.