Note: Single-source report; awaiting corroboration.
In April 2024, the CDC updated its Public Access to CDC Funded Publications Policy to comply with the 2022 Memorandum from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), which increases access to federally funded scientific research. This update eliminates the previous 12-month embargo, requiring all peer-reviewed, taxpayer-funded scientific studies and publications authored or co-authored by CDC employees and contractors as part of their official duties to be made immediately and freely available to the public.
The policy applies to all CDC employees, fellows, and contractors, covering all CDC Centers, Institutes, Offices, and Business Services Offices both domestically and internationally. It includes all CDC-funded intramural and extramural research and mandates submission of all relevant peer-reviewed scholarly publications for public access.
To support compliance, CDC uses the National Institutes of Health Manuscript Submission (NIHMS) system to submit manuscripts to PubMed Central and CDC Stacks. The CDC will make available either the author’s peer-reviewed, journal-accepted manuscript or the publisher-edited manuscript, but will only share the publisher’s final version if permitted by copyright restrictions.
Publishers may submit manuscripts to NIHMS for authors through multiple pathways. For questions, the CDC provides a Publishing Helpdesk for assistance.