Scope

The NSF Public Access Policy applies to awards based on proposals submitted or due on or after January 25, 2016. For earlier awards, deposit is encouraged, but not required.
It applies to articles in peer-reviewed journals, juried conference papers, and data that result from NSF funding.
Frequently Asked Questions for Public Access from NSF

Depositing Articles

The policy requires that articles in peer-reviewed journals and juried conference papers be deposited in NSF-PAR.
Depositing in NSF-PAR is the only way to fulfill the public access mandate for publications. Deposit in institutional or disciplinary repositories, or publication in an open access journal, is not enough on its own.
NSF has prepared a video tutorial explaining this deposit process: Deposit Publications in the NSF Public Access Repository (NSF-PAR).

NSF requires either:
- Final accepted version (postprint) OR
- Version of record (publisher’s final version)
If you deposit the final accepted version, it will be the version accessible to the public in NSF-PAR after the 12-month embargo unless NSF obtains the version of record from the publisher directly. PIs, co-PIs and NSF Program staff will also have access to a copy during project reporting.
To determine whether you can deposit the version of record:
- Check your publishing contract (ideally do this before you sign it; you’ve already granted a license to the Federal government per the NSF Grant General Conditions).
- Use Jisc Open Policy Finder to check your publisher’s default policy.
If you think you have signed a contract that prevents you from depositing either the final accepted version or the version of record, contact us for assistance.

The NSF Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide Chapter II.C.2.g.(vi).b permits you to include publication costs in your proposal budget. You can request funding to pay article processing charges (APCs) that some publishers require in order to publish an article on an open access basis (i.e., free to read without any embargo, perhaps with a public license for reuse).
Note that most publishers do not require authors to pay an article processing charge in order to be able to comply with the public access mandate. Check your rights under your publisher’s default agreement.

NSF-PAR requires deposits in PDF/A format, an archival format that embeds all the fonts needed for the file.
NSF provides instructions for exporting in PDF/A format from Word: Converting Files to PDF/A format (PDF)
Peter Selinger at Dalhousie University provides instructions for exporting in PDF/A format from LaTeX: Creating high-quality PDF/A documents using LaTeX

Deposit articles that are in “final accepted” or “published” state.
You must deposit articles in order to include them in your annual or final project report.
Regardless of when you deposit, your article will not be available for public access through NSF-PAR until 12 months after publication. However, the metadata will be available soon after deposit. (It can take up to 6 hours for a deposited publication to appear in your Project Report and for the metadata to be visible in NSF-PAR.)

NSF’s Public Access Policy applies to data as well as articles.
Data Sharing Policy: “Investigators are expected to share with other researchers, at no more than incremental cost and within a reasonable time, the primary data, samples, physical collections and other supporting materials created or gathered in the course of work under NSF grants. Grantees are expected to encourage and facilitate such sharing.”
For details specific to your discipline, see Dissemination and Sharing of Research Results.

- The Libraries offer trainings on the NSF Public Access Policy for the Penn State community. Contact us to request a training for your college, department, or lab.
- If you are offering a training of your own, please feel free to draw upon our training slide deck, which is licensed under the CC BY 4.0 International License.
- The October 2020 session was recorded and can be viewed below.