NIH Public Access and You

To advance science and improve human health, NIH makes the peer-reviewed articles it funds publicly available on PubMed Central. The NIH public access policy requires scientists to submit final peer-reviewed journal manuscripts that arise from NIH funds to PubMed Central immediately upon acceptance for publication.

Pub Med

Pub Med

PMC Overview PubMed Central® (PMC) is a free archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature at the U.S. National Institutes of Health's National Library of Medicine (NIH/NLM). In keeping with NLM’s legislative mandate to collect and preserve the biomedical literature, PMC serves as a digital counterpart to NLM’s extensive print journal collection. Launched in February 2000, PMC was developed and is managed by NLM’s National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI).

The Policy applies to any manuscript that: • Is peer-reviewed*; • Is accepted for publication in a journal on or after

April 7, 2008; • Describes work supported by an NIH grant or

cooperative

NIH Open Access Policy

*What is not peer-reviewed? Invited review articles, invited comments, most book chapters,

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The Policy implements Division G, Title II, Section 218 of PL 110-161 (Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2008) which states:

The Director of the National Institutes of Health shall

require that all investigators funded by the NIH submit or

have submitted for them to the National Library of

Medicine’s PubMed Central an electronic version of their

final, peer-reviewed manuscripts upon acceptance for

publication, to be made publicly available no later than 12

months after the official date of publication: Provided, That

the NIH shall implement the public access policy in a

manner consistent with copyright law.

What to

Submit When to Submit

When to Make

Public

Where to Make

Public

• Make sure that the copyright agreement allows the paper to be posted to PubMed Central (PMC) in accordance with the NIH Public Access Policy.

• There are four methods for submission to Pub Med Central.

How to comply

• Method A: Some journals automatically post NIH supported papers directly to PMC

– https://publicaccess.nih.gov/submit_process_journals.htm

• The number of journals doing this seems to be increasing.

• It is by far the easiest way to go

How to comply

• Method B: Authors must make special arrangements for some journals and publishers to post the paper directly to PMC.

– https://publicaccess.nih.gov/select_deposit_publishers.htm

• The “special arrangements” may include paying e.g. $2,000. The arrangement may be pitched as “for $2,000 you can make your article electronically available to everyone”. You can do that for free by Method C. Method B is easy but expensive.

How to comply

• Method C: Authors or their designee must submit manuscripts to the National Institutes of Health Manuscript Submission System (NIHMS).

• https://publicaccess.nih.gov/Methods-C-D-BP • Not so easy but cheap.

How to comply

• Method D: Some publishers will submit manuscripts to the National Institutes of Health Manuscript Submission System (NIHMS).

– https://publicaccess.nih.gov/Method%20D%20Publishers

How to comply

Wait, there’s more!

• There’s a stick. • Anyone submitting an application,

proposal, or report to the NIH must include the PMC reference number (PMCID) when citing applicable papers.

• Not the PMID! The PMCID.

Wait, there’s more!

Wait, there’s more! • Anyone submitting an application, proposal, or report

to the NIH must include the PMC reference number (PMCID) when citing applicable papers.

• Not the PMID! The PMCID. • Articles reporting projects supported by the NIH

must acknowledge that support. NIH tracks articles that cite their grants and check to see that they have PMCID numbers.

• If a publication that should be made available through PubMed Central is not (i.e. not PMCID) the article is “not in compliance” with a red dot in your MyNCBI bibliography.

Wait, there’s a stick!

Funding of a project can be delayed or canceled if there are articles “not in

compliance”.