Policy Background

NEH’s Public Access Policy is in part a response to a 2022 memo sent by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to all federal agencies. Then-acting OSTP director and social scientist Alondra Nelson called on all federal grant makers to establish plans that “ensure free, immediate, and equitable access to federally funded research.” The Public Access Plan will bring NEH in line with other research funding agencies such as the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health, which have required public access for over a decade. 

It’s important to note that the White House deliberately chose the phrase “public access” over “open access.” This seemingly small difference has implications for where and how articles are shared. For instance, under the OSTP memo guidance and the NEH Public Access Policy, publishers are not required to make NEH-supported articles available publicly through the journal website. They may continue to restrict access only to journal subscribers. 

NEH’s policy is limited to peer-reviewed journal articles and a subset of research datasets. The agency will continue to support the broad dissemination of other kinds of award outputs that fall outside the scope of the Public Access Policy’s requirements. For several decades, NEH’s Notices of Funding Opportunities have stated that “all other considerations being equal, NEH gives preference to projects that provide free access to the public.” We understand the complexities of developing and sustaining the products of NEH awards, and we acknowledge that not all outputs should be widely shared. 

Because NEH funds many areas of the humanities beyond academic research, grantees who are not actively publishing work based on their awards may find the Public Access Plan has minimal impact. Indeed, the plan will primarily affect academic institutions and scholars who receive NEH awards for research and writing, and subsequently publish in peer-reviewed journals. 

The NEH Public Access Plan does not apply to monographs or chapters in edited volumes, though NEH is actively engaged in broadening access to the thousands of books NEH has funded over nearly sixty years. Currently, the Division of Research Programs and Office of Digital Humanities offer the Fellowships Open Book Program to help academic presses make more of their NEH-supported titles freely accessible to the public.  

Throughout 2024, NEH conducted outreach to stakeholders such as the Modern Language Association, Association of University Presses, Association of Research Libraries, American Council of Learned Societies, and other organizations to listen to feedback and respond to questions. These conversations informed the final policy and will help shape implementation details.