Under the Stevens Amendment, each publication, press release, or other public facing document (i.e., websites, social media posts, conference presentations, resource guides and RFPs) describing research supported by a DoL, DoEd, or DHHS grant or cooperative agreement must clearly state:
- The percentage of the total costs of the program or project financed with federal funds.
- The total dollar amount of federal funds allocated to the project or program.
- The percentage and dollar amount of the total costs of the project or program financed by non-governmental/non-federal sources (e.g., University funds, private foundations or state funds).
Example
This [project/publication/program/website, etcetera] [is/was] supported by the [federal sub-agency] of the [federal agency] as part of an award totaling $XX [insert total Notice of Grant Award (NoA) amount here] with XX percentage financed from non-federal sources.
Requirements for NIH-Supported Research
Publications, press releases and other public facing documents must include the following three statements:
- A specific acknowledgment of NIH grant support, such as:
"Research reported in this [publication/press release] was supported by [name of the Institute(s), Center, or other NIH offices] of the National Institutes of Health under award number [specific NIH grant number(s) in this format: R01GM987654]."
- An acknowledgement of the level of NIH funding that indicates:
The percentage and dollar amounts of the total program or project costs financed with Federal money and the percentage and dollar amount of the total costs financed by nongovernmental sources.
- A disclaimer that says:
"The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health."
Additional NIH-specific Reminders
- Attributing publications to grants that did not actually support the research does not align with NIH policy and could inadvertently result in compliance actions.
- If the NIH grant only supported a specific part of the published work this should be made clear in the grant citation in the publication and in the Research Performance Progress Report.
- NIH-funded investigators must accurately list their affiliations on publications to reflect where they performed the NIH-funded work rather than using their current address if it is different from the performance site.
- Calculate percentages based on the entire Project Segment (“project period”) – use the total direct and indirect costs for the current approved competitive segment.
- If a social media Human Research Participants recruitment ad does not allow the full Stevens Amendment required text due to character limits, is it adequate to include it on landing pages with a full description?
- NIH Policy Office response -"We don’t see any issues arising from recipients using a shortened award acknowledgment or other language that links to a landing page with the full information. We specifically discussed using language such as, “Supported by NIH award 1234546: see here” or “Click for more info.” with a link to the landing page, but we don’t have prescribed language given you may be working with different limits depending on the social media site/ad. As an additional suggestion, we also saw recommendations online that posting that language in a photo/jpeg format can sometimes get around character limits on some sites." October 2026
Additional NIH instructions for acknowledging federal support