Please note: Below is the current policy and procedures for the National Science Foundation. This policy and procedure will change as all federal funding agencies begin compliance with the August 2022 White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) policy memorandum entitled “Ensuring Free, Immediate, and Equitable Access to Federally Funded Research.” Please see our OSTP/Nelson Memo impact webpage for more details and updates about the policies and upcoming changes.
What do I need to submit to NSF?
NSF's public access policy covers articles in peer-reviewed journals, juried conference papers, and data that result from NSF funding. NSF-funded authors are required to submit either the final accepted version or the version of record in PDF/A format.
The final accepted peer-reviewed manuscript is the version of the article that has been accepted for publication and includes all changes made by the author during the peer-review process. The version of record is the publisher's authoritative copy of the paper and includes all modifications from the peer-review process, editing and formatting changes.
The current NSF policy does not require public access to data. However, 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. Cost of documenting, preparing, publishing, disseminating and sharing research findings and supporting material are allowable charges against the grant. NSF grant proposals must include a document of no more than two pages uploaded under "Data Management Plan" as a supplementary document. Plans must describe how the proposal will conform to NSF policy on the dissemination and sharing of research results, including data types, standards to be used for data and metadata formats, policies for access and sharing, provisions for re-use, and plans for archiving and preservation of access.
Do I have the rights to submit this?
The Federal Government has a non-exclusive, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free license to exercise or authorize others to exercise all rights under copyright to use a federally-funded work for Federal purposes. The Federal Government license includes the right to have the copyrighted material included in a repository where the public can search, read, download, and analyze the material in digital form. (per NSF 18-041 Frequently Asked Questions for Public Access. In general, publisher policies allow for authors to comply with NSF policy, though they often require a delay in making publications available. With this in mind, NSF allows for an embargo of public access to such works up to 12 months after publication.
Where do I submit?
For final accepted peer-reviewed manuscripts of journal articles or juried conference papers, the NSF uses the NSF Public Access Repository (NSF-PAR).
When do I need to submit?
Publications must be submitted to NSF-PAR within 12 months of initial publication.
How do I submit required publications?
Before submitting your publications, you will need to:
- Sign in to Research.gov and choose ‘Deposit publication’ from My Desktop.
- Alternatively, you will be prompted within Project Reports to deposit publications in NSF-PAR when reporting journals or juried conference papers as published.
To deposit the publication, the PI/co-PI will need:
- their Research.gov/FastLane credentials
- their Award ID (a list will be automatically provided)
- the Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
- a copy of the peer-reviewed journal article or juried conference paper (formatted in the PDF/A standard).
Once deposited and validated in NSF-PAR, the publications will then be automatically included in your project report under the Products section. It may take up to 6 hours for them to appear in your project report.