Grant-Compliant Options for Publishing NIH-Funded Articles with ACS

The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) recently announced they would accelerate the implementation of their announced policy requiring any accepted manuscript resulting from research they fund to be made publicly available in PubMed Central at the time of publication.

A lack of clarity about this new policy, along with the acceleration of the deadline from January 2026 to July 1, 2025, is causing confusion among librarians and authors during an already challenging period for the research community.

As an industry norm, most publishers permit immediate sharing of accepted manuscripts, often called zero-embargo green open access (OA), only through an institutional OA agreement or the payment of an Article Publishing Charge (APC). ACS Publications is one of the few publishers offering an additional option for zero-embargo green OA at a reduced cost for compliance through an Article Development Charge (ADC).

In support of broad access to scientific research, we offer multiple pathways for the research community to publish OA with ACS Publications and comply with funder mandates in a manner that sustains our high-quality publishing services. Explore the grant-compliant options for publishing in ACS journals that meet this new NIH requirement.

Option 1: Affiliated authors can publish OA at no cost through an institutional open access agreement

More than one-third of academic institutions with an ACS Publications subscription have an institutional OA agreement that provides seamless gold or green OA publishing services to affiliated authors. These agreements enable authors to satisfy funder mandates for OA around the globe at no cost to them, including the new NIH requirement.

If an author’s institution participates in an OA agreement with ACS, we’ll automatically recognize this affiliation and guide them through using the service.

Check if your institution is one of the 1600+ globally covered by an institutional OA agreement with ACS Publications.

Option 2: Enable gold OA via APC

Authors may elect to publish gold OA in an ACS journal by paying an APC, which also allows them to share the accepted or published manuscript and meet funder mandates for OA, including the new NIH requirement.

The APC meets the definition of an allowable grant expense for U.S. funding agencies including DOE, NASA, and NIH.

Option 3: Enable zero-embargo green OA via ADC

Elect to publish zero-embargo green OA in an ACS hybrid journal by paying an ADC upon editorial acceptance. By covering the costs of the services from initial submission through to the final editorial decision, authors are able to share the accepted manuscript without the standard 12-month embargo. This approach meets the new requirement from the NIH.

Like most publishers, we do not permit immediate sharing of the accepted manuscript without a fee (via subscription, OA agreement, APC, or ADC) because it is not sustainable and jeopardizes our excellent publishing services to provide the highest integrity and most trusted content.

The ADC is payable once a manuscript has been accepted for publication, and it is roughly half the cost of our standard APC as it covers the cost of publishing services rendered from initial submission through to the final editorial decision. These costs include services such as author support; peer review management and infrastructure; Editors and editorial support; and the development and maintenance of our systems for data verification, fraud detection, and manuscript submission.

Like the APC, the ADC also meets the definition of an allowable grant expense for U.S. funding agencies including DOE, NASA, and NIH.

For clarity:

• The ADC covers the costs incurred for services sought by funders and authors leading up to editorial acceptance.
  • The ADC is not a submission fee.
  • The ADC is not a deposition fee.
• The ADC is only applicable after a manuscript is accepted.
• The ADC allows authors to immediately share the accepted manuscript and meet funder mandates for manuscript deposition. (Free deposition is possible with a standard 12-month embargo)
• The ADC is roughly half the cost of our standard APC and far less costly than many other publishers’ options for NIH policy compliance.
• The ADC does not apply if an author is publishing under an institutional OA agreement (such as a read and publish or read and green agreement).

Find out more about how we support institutions, funders, and researchers in making the results of their work accessible to all on ACS Open Science.