Skip to Main Content

How to Comply with the NIH Public Access Policy

Directions for investigators publishing NIH-funded research

Is your paper compliant?

First, add your paper to My Bibliography in MyNCBI to see if an icon appears. To do this, create a MyNCBI account linked to your eRA Commons account by clicking the eRA Commons button at the sign in page. Then:

  • Add all NIH funded publications to My Bibliography
    • Add all articles that resulted from funding that you are a PI for, even if you are not an author
    • Add peer-reviewed articles from research funded by NIH, even if they are not in PubMed

The following icons require no action on your part:

  • Green dot: Compliant. The PMCID number will be displayed.
  • Yellow dot: Manuscript submitted and in progress.

The following icons require action:

You must follow the steps outlined below to ensure compliance. 

Check your journal's policy

Check the journal list to see who will be depositing your paper into PMC. You will see one of the following listed:

  • "Agreement to Deposit: NIH funded articles": Journals who only submit NIH-funded articles to PMC 
  • "Agreement to Deposit: All articles": Journals who submit all articles to PMC

Default embargoes for journals are also included. Per the NIH, if your paper must be made immediately available and your journal has an embargo period, you will need to make arrangements with your publisher to have the paper deposited without an embargo period. 

You can also check the "For Authors" or "Instructions to Authors" section of your publisher's website or use Open Policy Finder.

Selective Deposit Programs

Certain open access agreements allow the publisher to deposit the article into PMC even if the publisher doesn't participate in PMC. The publisher would also need to be indexed in MEDLINE and the article must acknowledge support of a PMC designated funder or a member of the Europe PMC Funders Group. You must check with your publisher to see if your journal falls under this category and check the NIH's Selective Deposit Collections page. 

Details of two journal records with orange box around the Agreement to Deposit information and blue box around the Embargo information

 

Steps involved in the PMC deposit process

As soon as the manuscript is accepted for publication, you will need to start the process of depositing the paper into PubMed Central (PMC). PMC is an archive of biomedical and life sciences NIH-funded research. Once finished, you will have a PMCID (PubMed Central ID) you will use to demonstrate compliance. PubMed Central is not the same as PubMed, and a PMCID is not the same as a PMID.

Authors (or someone they delegate) can submit the final peer-reviewed manuscript (not the final published version) to the NIHMS. Submitting to NIHMS is the only way an author can submit manuscripts to be added into PMC, if the journal publisher doesn't deposit it. 

Submitting a final peer-reviewed manuscript to PMC involves:

  1. Depositing manuscript files and linking to NIH funding using these instructions.
  2. Authorizing NIH to process the manuscript. The authors will receive an email seeking approval for this.
  3. Approving the PMC-formatted manuscript for public display.
  4. Going back to My Bibliography and clicking "Edit Status" link to enter supporting information for the citation.

What Happens After This?

The NIHMS will email the author and all PIs the citation with the PMCID once it is assigned. PMC will automatically make the paper publicly available after the designated delay period has expired. The NIHMS ID (NIH Manuscript Submission), is not a permanent substitute for a PMCID. It is assigned when the deposit process is started, and is only valid for three months post-publication.

Additional resources