Open Access Publishing

Mandates

In the research community, a "mandate" refers to guidelines or requirements set by a governing body, funding agency, or other organization stipulating how research should be conducted, disseminated, or made accessible. These mandates are designed to ensure that research practices align with goals such as ethical standards, transparency, and public accessibility.

Types of Mandates
There are different types of mandates, each with its specific focus and requirements:

• Funder Mandates: These are issued by funders of the research, dictating requirements that researchers must follow as a condition of receiving funding.
• Data Sharing Mandates: These focus on the sharing of research data.
• Public Access and Open Access Mandates: These dictate how and where research outputs should be made accessible to the public.
• Ethical Mandates: These relate to the ethical conduct of research, like participant consent and data privacy.

NOTE: Much of the mandated public access grant information that was previously available on Grants.gov has been taken down. Please look to the specific funding agency for guidance (NIH and NSF are linked below). SPARC (a non-profit promoting open access) maintains an up-to-date list of funding agencies, which ones have policies in effect regarding the sharing of publications, and links to the policies. You can access it at https://sparcopen.org/our-work/2022-updated-ostp-policy-guidance/

The NIH Public Access Policy went into effect July 1, 2025. The NIH 2023 Data Management & Sharing Policy has not changed and remains in effect. For more information about submitting your manuscript to PubMed, see their information for authors.

The NIH Public Access Policy applies to any manuscript that:

• Is peer-reviewed;
• And accepted for publication in a journal on or after July 1, 2025 (manuscripts accepted for publication between April 7, 2008 and June 30, 2025 are subject to the 2008 NIH Public Access Policy);
• Was the result of any direct funding from an NIH grant or cooperative agreement active in Fiscal Year 2008 or beyond, or direct funding from the NIH Intramural Program

The 2025 NIH Public Access Policy does NOT apply to the following:

• manuscripts accepted for publication before July 1, 2025, but published on or after July 1, 2025;
• manuscripts accepted for publication on or after July 1, 2025, but that are results of a NIH grant that closed before July 1, 2025
• Books, book chapters, and non peer-reviewed materials

Important considerations:

• The library does not have funds to cover APCs. 
• The NIH highly encourages authors to tell the journal or publisher during the submission process that if the article is accepted, the Author Accepted Manuscript is subject to the NIH Public Access Policy, and that this means that NIH, as the funding agency, has the right to make the Author Accepted Manuscript publicly available in PubMed Central immediately upon publication. See https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-25-049.html 
• Compliance with the public access policy means uploading a copy of your published article, or the author accepted manuscript to PubMed. Submitting your article to UD's institutional repository, UDSpace, or other digital archive cannot be substituted (but can certainly be done in addition to PubMed).
• For a more in-depth discussion about the conflict between journal policies and the NIH public access mandate the Authors Alliance published answers to questions they have received from authors: NIH Public Access Policy: Q&A for Authors

The National Science Foundation requires that manuscripts that result from a NSF grant be deposited in a public access compliant repository designated by NSF and:

• Be available for download, reading, and analysis free of charge immediately upon publication beginning October 1, 2025;
• Possess a minimum set of machine-readable metadata elements in a metadata record to be made available free of charge upon initial publication (Section 7.3.1);
• Be managed to ensure long-term preservation (Section 7.7); and
• Be reported in annual and final reports during the period of the award with a unique persistent identifier 

NSF Public Access Plan 2.0 (opens as a PDF)

Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (opens as a PDF)

Video Tutorial on how to submit publications.