NSF Public Access Updates Now Avaialble

The National Science Foundation (NSF) recently issued policy supplements to the agency’s most current Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG), NSF 24-1. Supplement NSF 26-202 provides information directly related to the agency’s updated public access to publications policy.

These include:

• The updated policy applies to research products associated with NSF awards issued on or after January 22, 2026. Research products associated with awards issued before the date will likely need to comply with previous NSF public access policy requirements (see below).
• The updated policy impacts the final version of research products accepted for publication after peer-review in scholarly journals, juried conference papers, or workshop proceedings.
• Submission of research products to the NSF Public Access Repository (NSF-PAR) via research.org accounts should be done at or before the time of publication.
• Research products submitted to the NSF-PAR will not utilize an embargo period before being made publicly accessible on their publication dates. The likely exception (still unconfirmed at the time of publication) will be products associated with awards issued before the January 22, 2026, effective date. Those products will likely continue to use a 12-month embargo period before the NSF-PAR provides full public access.
• Persistent Identifiers (PIDs) associated with any NSF-PAR submission, such as DOI’s, should be included at the time of submission. If no PIDs are associated with an item being submitted, PI’s are asked to provide minimal descriptive metadata.

The NSF confirms in Supplement 2 that special journal or publisher fees used for the purpose of making versions of record publicly accessible, such as OA licensing fees, are allowable award costs.

The above information can also be found on the PAS’ NSF Essentials page.