NSF Submission Essentials (updated)

Source:  NSF Public Access Plan 2.0: Ensuring Open, Immediate and Equitable Access to National Science Foundation Funded Research

Impacts:   Peer-reviewed scholarly publications derived from research funded by new agency awards resulting from proposals submitted or due on or after January 31, 2025. Scholarly works that do not meet this criteria must abide by the NSF’s previous public access to publications policy.

Timeline: NSF award recipients should deposit scholarly works into the NSF public access repository by the submission of their annual project report covering the period the article was accepted for publication. Scholarly publications deposited in the NSF-PAR will be made fully accessible upon their official publication date.

Who Submits:   PI’s or co-PI’s (only)

What to Submit:  Peer-reviewed journal manuscripts and juried conference papers accepted for publication. Versions of record may be submitted if author has the right to do so.

Format:  PDF/A (see below)

Where to Submit:   research.gov

Repository:   NSF Public Access Repository (NSF-PAR)

Notes:

• Principal investigators can submit manuscripts to NSF-PAR while compiling reports. Note: the submission-validation process can take up to six hours.
• Successfully submitted manuscripts automatically appear in project reports.

Saving or Converting to a PDF/A

PDF/A is a specialized format used for archiving and the long-term preservation of electronic documents.

• Word documents may be converted to the PDF/A format through the Save As function.
• PDF documents may be converted to the PDF/A format in Adobe products depending on the application and/or version.

For assistance with Adobe products, please contact the DoIT Helpdesk.

Public Access Service staff are happy to convert documents on request.