The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) has announced a new open access policy which comes into effect from 1 June 2022. The policy is based on four principles:

• Principle 1 – Articles must be immediately, freely and openly accessible to all
• Principle 2 – There should be no barriers to the re-use and dissemination of NIHR funded articles
• Principle 3 – Articles must be freely discoverable
• Principle 4 – NIHR will pay reasonable fees to enable immediate open access

Research articles will have to be made open access immediately upon publication (with no embargo period) with a Creative Commons Attribution license. Publishing through one of the library’s open access publisher deals is a great way to meet the requirements, as long as the article is also made available through PubMed Central.

Any queries with regards to the NIHR open access policy should be directed to openaccess@nihr.ac.uk.