Federal Public Access Policies

What do I need to submit to NSF?

For journal articles and juried conference proceedings resulting from awards made for proposals submitted, or due, on or after January 25, 2016, either the final accepted version of the manuscript or the publisher’s version of record must be submitted.

Do I have the rights to submit this?

The Federal Government claims a license to exercise all rights under copyright to use a federally-funded work for federal purposes, including depositing works resulting from NSF funded research in an open-access repository. In general, publisher policies allow for authors to comply with NSF policy, though they often require a delay in making publications available. With this in mind, NSF allows for an embargo of public access to such works up to twelve months after publication. However, they also require that the metadata about the journal article or juried conference proceeding be publicly available at the time of publication.

Where do I submit this?

Log in to Research.gov using your FastLane credentials

When do I need to submit this?

Journal or conference publications resulting from NSF funding should be submitted to NSF Public Access Repository (NSF-PAR) once they are published.

How do I submit required publications?

Before submitting your publications, you will need to:

• Know your Research.gov FastLane credentials
• Know your Award ID (viewable when you login)
• Have the DOI for the publication (or manually enter article metadata)
• Have a copy of the journal article or juried conference paper formatted as a PDF/A

1. Log in to Research.Gov using the link at the top of the page.
2. Select the “Deposit Publication (NSF-PAR) link
3. Follow the 4-Step deposit wizard
4. Upload the Final Accepted Manuscript Version in PDF/A format
5. Select the appropriate Award ID associated with the publication
6. Review the publication information and select “Submit”

For more detailed help from NSF, see the NSF-PAR Getting Started Guide or Public Access Video.