Center for Clinical and Translational Science

On May 25, 2008, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) changed its policy regarding public access to findings from federally supported research, mandating submission of manuscripts to PubMed Central. The NIH Public Access Policy ensures that the public has access to the published results of NIH-funded research. The policy requires that scientists submit accepted, peer-reviewed manuscripts that grew out of studies performed with NIH funds to the digital archive PubMed Central. To help advance science and improve human health, the policy requires that these journal papers are accessible to the public on PubMed Central no later than 12 months after publication.

This policy states that all NIH applications, proposals, and progress reports must include the PubMed Central reference number (PMCID) when citing an article that falls under the NIH Public Access policy or arose from an investigator's NIH award. The PMCID will need to be included on documents such as the Literature Cited section and the Publications List that are included as part of NIH applications, proposals, and progress reports. It is important to emphasis that the PMCID is not the same as the PubMed Identifier number (PMID), since the similarities in terminology may be confusing.

All final peer-reviewed manuscripts must be submitted to PMCID through the NIH Manuscript Submission (NIHMS) system. The scientist must:

• Deposit the final peer-reviewed manuscript files (e.g., Microsoft Word document and figures) in the NIHMS system;
• Indicate the NIH award(s) to which the final peer-reviewed manuscript is related;
• After the NIHMS converts the deposited files to a standard PubMed Central (PMC) format, NIHMS will notify the scientist via email to review the PMC-formatted final peer-reviewed manuscript to approve its release.

Some journals will deposit the final, peer-reviewed manuscript files into the NIHMS system automatically. In that case, the scientist will still have to provide the associated award information, and review and approve the final peer-reviewed manuscript. The NIHMS system will send notifications via email when these actions are needed and include a link to the NIH Manuscript Submission system web site. For more information about the NIHMS system, go to http://www.nihms.nih.gov/. An online tutorial is available at http://www.nihms.nih.gov/web-help/index.html.

This Public Access Policy applies to any manuscript that: (1) is peer-reviewed; (2) is accepted for publication in a journal on or after April 7, 2008; (3) arises from any direct funding from an NIH grant or cooperative agreement active in fiscal year 2008; (4) arises from any direct funding from an NIH contract signed on or after April 7, 2008; (5) arises from any direct funding from the NIH Intramural Program or an NIH employee. For more information on this policy please visit http://www.rockefeller.edu/library/PMCID.php.