Pharmacy

The NIH Public Access Policy is in effect as of July 1, 2025. 

Overall Requirements and Scope

• The Policy requires immediate public access to articles - embargoes are no longer allowed.
• NIH reiterates authors do not have to pay a fee to comply with the Policy.
• The Policy applies to manuscripts accepted for publication on or after July 1, 2025. This means the Policy will apply to existing grants if the article is published on or after that date.
• The Policy requires that final peer-reviewed manuscripts be submitted to PubMed Central (PMC) to be made publicly available immediately upon publication.
• The Policy requires that grantees explicitly grant the NIH the right to make the manuscript available in PMC without an embargo.
• The Policy does not explicitly grant full reuse rights of the manuscript to the public.

Compliance

• NIH will maintain its two existing submission pathways: submission of the final peer-reviewed manuscript to PMC directly or submission of the final published article to PMC from a journal that has a formal agreement with the National Library of Medicine (NLM) (see list of participating journals here).

Enforcement

• Non-compliance with the Policy, including failure to acknowledge federal funding in the manuscript, may be considered when making future funding decisions for the grantee or cause a delay in the continuation of non-competing grant awards.

You can find more information about compliance with the policy on the NIH website and can also . 

UT Libraries will continue to monitor the implementation of new policies related to the 2022 OSTP memo Ensuring Free, Immediate, and Equitable Access to Federally Funded Research. You can find more information about federal agency policies on our LibGuide.

This update was originally shared by UT Libraries staff, Michael Shensky and Colleen Lyon.

We regularly talk to publishers about options that will allow OA publishing for UT authors.

Here is the current list of memberships and initiatives that are in place to provide direct OA publishing benefits to UT authors. 

Article processing fees (APCs) are the fees publishers charge authors for their articles to be open access. APCs are optional for authors to pay. Not paying an APC means that the article will still be published, but it won't be open access.

If you need help or have questions, please contact your subject librarian, Lynn Bostwick, at lynn.bostwick@austin.utexas.edu

UT Austin faculty and students own the copyright to their creations. Copyright owners have the option of assigning non-exclusive or exclusive rights to that work to third parties, like publishers. 

You can retain copyright to your work through the use of an author addendum or through conversations and negotiation with your editor. If you are unable to negotiate to retain full rights to your work, you may still be able to share a copy of it. Most publishers allow the author's final manuscript to be shared publicly. The author's final manuscript is the version of your article that reflects all changes from the peer review process, but that has not yet gone through final copy editing and layout work. It is usually a double-spaced .doc file. If you are curious about policies from a specific journal, you can find more information on Jisc Open Policy Finder. Jisc Open Policy Finder aggregates publisher open access policies and provides a summary of that information on a journal by journal basis.

Texas ScholarWorks (TSW) is a publications repository appropriate for articles, technical reports, conference proceedings, posters, theses and dissertations, and more. 

TSW was established to provide open, online access to the products of the University's research and scholarship, to preserve those works for future generations, to promote new models of scholarly communication, and to help deepen community understanding of the value of higher education.

Who may upload content to TSW?

Any faculty, researcher, student, or staff member of UT Austin may upload content. Undergraduate students are asked to have faculty sponsorship of their work. While UT Austin community members are welcome to upload content themselves, the Libraries also offers an option to manage the uploading process on behalf of submitters. There is no charge for this library-managed option. Please see the TSW website for a complete list of FAQs. 

How do I get access to upload?

First, do an initial login to Texas ScholarWorks to establish your identity in the system, and then email tsw@utlists.utexas.edu to request access to upload materials.

Much of the information on this page was copied from the library guide, Open Access at UT Austin by Colleen Lyon.