For assistance interpreting federal public access policies, please contact your subject librarian or librarians who specialize in a specific area of the policies. The specialist librarians are Stephen Wolfson for copyright and licensing, and Lauren Phegley for data management and data sharing.
You can also use the web form below to get in touch with a subteam of librarians who answer questions about federal public access policies.
If you have read through this guide and still do not feel comfortable answering a question about the federal public access policies, send an email to the following group of people and they will do their best to help you and/or the patron you are working with:
Judith Currano, Sam Kirk, Jen Lege, Lauren Phegley, and Neetu Rajpal.
Be sure to send an email to all five of these librarians at once, rather than picking one.
Please also see the recording of the June 17, 2025 training for library staff about public access policies and the use of this guide.
The IMLS public access policy went into effect on October 1, 2025, and governs IMLS-funded research outputs associated with peer reviewed publications. The policy mandates that research outputs must be made available without embargo by the date of publication.
Research outputs include permissible scientific research data and, for peer reviewed publications, either the version of record or the author accepted manuscript, depending on publisher policies.
The IMLS public access policy for datasets went into effect on October 1, 2025 for all new awards or funding rounds provided by the IMLS on or after that date.
All researchers receiving direct funding from the IMLS, especially those receiving awards from the National Leadership Grants for Museums, the National Leadership Grants for Libraries, and the Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Programs, or otherwise specified as research projects in the Notice of Funding Opportunity.
The IMLS requires researchers to submit “permissible” data that underlie any scholarly, peer-reviewed publications, to a repository suitable to the type of data. This repository must comply with Section 508 accessibility standards, and provide the ability to create permanent identifiers for submissions.
Researchers must submit datasets to a suitable repository no later than the publication of the peer-reviewed scholarly work to which it applies.
The IMLS public access policy for publications went into effect on October 1, 2025 for all new awards or funding rounds provided by the IMLS on or after that date.
All researchers receiving direct funding from the IMLS, especially those receiving awards from the National Leadership Grants for Museums, the National Leadership Grants for Libraries, and the Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Programs, or otherwise specified as research projects in the Notice of Funding Opportunity, who produce original research in the form of peer reviewed research articles or final manuscripts published in scholarly journals, including book chapters, editorials, and conference proceedings published in other scholarly outputs.
Researchers must make an appropriate version of their original research outputs immediately available, without embargo, no later than the date of original publication by submitting it to an appropriate IMLS-designated repository.
Researchers must submit a machine-readable copy of the most-appropriate version of a published manuscript to the IMLS designated repository without embargo, no later than the original publication date.
