The NIH Public Access Policy (http://publicaccess.nih.gov/) requires that any investigator who receives a NIH research grant and publishes the results of the research in a scientific journal must deposit an electronic copy of the final peer-reviewed manuscript to the digital archive, PubMed Central. For any questions not answered on this page or for additional support please contact us at https://libraryhelp.med.nyu.edu/consults/.
What is the NIH Public Access Policy?
What types of awards fall under the Policy?
What is the penalty for not complying with the Policy?
How do you comply with the Policy?
Is PubMed Central the same as PubMed?
Who is responsible for complying with the Policy?
What if I am Not the Author of this Publication?
What version of the manuscript should be submitted to PubMed Central?
Can PIs delegate their compliance responsibilities to someone else?
Can PIs apply publication costs into their NIH grant?
How to find PMCIDs?
For Method C journals, who can submit the final peer-reviewed manuscript to PubMed Central?
What does this status mean?
What is the NIH Public Access Policy?
The NIH Public Access Policy (http://publicaccess.nih.gov/) requires that any investigator who receives a NIH research grant and publishes the results of the research in a scientific journal must deposit an electronic copy of the final peer-reviewed manuscript to the digital archive, PubMed Central. For any questions not answered on this page or for additional support please contact the library at https://libraryhelp.med.nyu.edu/consults/.
Effective April 7, 2008, the National Institutes of Health’s Revised Policy on Enhancing Public Access to Archived Publications Resulting from NIH-Funded Research placed the following reporting requirements on NIH-funded research:
What types of awards fall under the Policy?
Any NIH funding awarded after April 7, 2008 – including continuing grants or cooperative agreements – fall under the terms of this Policy.
What is the penalty for not complying with the Policy?
Non-compliance of this Policy will delay processing of non-competing continuation grant awards for all grants with start dates or renewal dates on or after July 1, 2013. The award will not be processed until recipients have demonstrated compliance.
How do you comply with the Policy?
All peer-reviewed articles, accepted for publication on or after April 7, 2008, that arise, in whole or in part, from NIH funding or from NIH staff must be deposited into PubMed Central – the NIH digital repository of all full-text peer reviewed journal articles.
There are four methods in which an article can be deposited into PMC (see chart below).
| Method A | Method B | Method C | Method D | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Version of Paper Submitted | Final Published Article | Final Published Article | Final Peer-Reviewed Manuscript | Final Peer-Reviewed Manuscript |
| Task 1: Who starts the deposit process? | Publisher | Publisher | Author or designee, via NIHMS | Publisher |
| Task 2: Who approves paper for processing? | Publisher | Publisher | Author, via NIHMS | Author, via NIHMS |
| Task 3: Who approves paper for Pub Med Central display? | Publisher | Publisher | Author, via NIHMS | Author, via NIHMS |
| Participating journal/publisher | Method A Journals | Make arrangements with these publishers | Check publishing agreement | Make arrangements with these publishers |
| Who is Responsible? | NIH Awardee | NIH Awardee | NIH Awardee | NIH Awardee |
| To cite papers, from acceptance for publication to 3 months post publication | PMCID or “PMC Journal- In Process” | PMCID or “PMC Journal- In Process” | PMCID or NIHMSID | PMCID or NIHMSID |
| To cite papers, 3 months post publication and beyond | PMCID | PMCID | PMCID |
PMCID |
Is PubMed Central the same as PubMed?
No. PubMed Central (PMC) is an archive of full-text biomedical journal papers available online without a fee. PubMed is a free database containing references and abstracts accessing on life sciences and biomedical topics. If an article is indexed in PubMed, this does not indicate that it is currently in, or will necessarily be in, PubMed Central.
Who is responsible for complying with the Policy?
Institutions and Principal Investigators (PI) are responsible for compliance. The PI of the grant is also responsible even if they are not an author or co-author of a publication that falls under the revised NIH policy.
What if I am Not the Author of this Publication?
If you are not an author of this publication, you can first check journal author agreement before you submit your publication. If the author retains permission to submit to PubMed Central, you can then:
For questions, requests or further information, contact us at https://libraryhelp.med.nyu.edu/consults/
What version of the manuscript should be submitted to PubMed Central?
Investigators must submit the final, peer-reviewed manuscripts to PubMed Central, unless they have specific permission from the publisher to submit the published version of the article. The final, peer-reviewed manuscript is the version including all modifications from the peer review process, but before the journal has done their final editing and formatting.
Can PIs delegate their compliance responsibilities to someone else?
Yes. PIs may assign a delegate from their My NCBI accounts to manage the compliance of publications. The Awards View feature within the My Bibliography section of a PI’s My NCBI account allows eRA Commons users to:
To assign a delegate PIs must sign into their My NCBI account, go to their My Bibliography section and click the “settings” link. Under the Bibliography Sharing section, Click the “Add a Delegate” link, enter the delegate’s e-mail address, and click the “Add a Delegate” button. The delegate will receive an email which they must then confirm by clicking on a link in the email. Please note that the option to “Add a Delegate” only appears when a Bibliography has been created in My NCBI.
Can PIs apply publication costs into their NIH grant?
Yes. The NIH will reimburse publication costs, including author fees, for grants and contracts provided:
Allotment for publication costs go in Section F (Detailed Budget, Other Direct Costs) of the research grant application. If this is a new application, the PI may want to delay publication costs until the later budget periods, once they have obtained data to share (http://grants.nih.gov/grants/developing_budget.htm).
Researchers and authors are increasingly being asked to provide PMCIDs (PubMed Central Reference Numbers).
You may locate an articles PMCID using the following methods:
1. If you're an author on the publication, the PMCID is listed in the record for the article in the Faculty Bibliography
2. The PMCID is posted in PubMed as soon as an article has been successfully processed by PubMed Central (PMC), which usually occurs around the time of publication. PMCIDs are listed in the lower right corner of the Abstract Plus view of PubMed.
For Method C journals, who can submit the final peer-reviewed manuscript to PubMed Central?
Anyone may submit the manuscript on behalf of the authors (e.g. administrative personnel, graduate students, etc.). Approval of the PDF Receipt and web version of the manuscript can be done by any of a paper's authors. If the initial author contacted for approval fails to take action, a request can be sent to NIH to re-assign the approval to another author.
At some point a copy of the accepted final peer-reviewed manuscript of the publication was submitted via the NIH Manuscript Submission System. As a result, the delegated author would have received an email from nihms-help@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov requesting approval of the manuscript.
To approve your publication in NIHMS:
Your publication is one step away from completed submission in PubMed Central via the NIH Manuscript Submission system. The delegated author would have received an email from nihms-help@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov requesting approval of the web version of the manuscript.
To approve your publication in NIHMS: