Nih policy ends publication delay but many papers still late
Ending the NIH embargo accelerated public access to funded research, but substantial delays remain
Digital LibrariesComputers and Society
Summary
Before July 2025, NIH-funded research articles could only be made publicly available after a one-year wait. The authors found that ending this waiting period made these articles appear faster online, especially in journals that are not fully open access. However, even after the policy change, many NIH-supported articles remained unavailable immediately after publication. This means that while progress was made, there are still delays in public access to some research.
What this means in practice
- •For library systems: Adjust catalogs and alerts to reflect faster availability of NIH-funded papers in non-open-access journals after the policy change.
- •For science communication teams: Update strategies to promote timely dissemination of NIH-supported articles now accessible sooner in PubMed Central.
Authors
Haining Wang
Abstract
On 1 July 2025 the National Institutes of Health began requiring that funded articles be publicly available in PubMed Central on the day they are published, ending the 12-month embargo that had applied since 2008. Comparing NIH-supported articles with articles in the same journals and months that reported no US federal support, before and after the policy, the share available in PubMed Central within a week of publication rose by 5.6 percentage points more for NIH-supported articles (95% CI 1.9 to 9.6). The change was concentrated in journals outside the Directory of Open Access Journals, where the share of NIH-supported articles in PubMed Central within a week doubled from 11% to 22%, with no differential change in DOAJ-listed journals. A pre-policy comparison showed no difference. For articles published in early 2026, the policy had made NIH-supported research available sooner, and most NIH-supported articles in journals outside the Directory were still not in PubMed Central a week after publication.