NIH Public Access Policy

Authors need to ensure that any copyright agreement between themselves and their publisher permits the submission of the author's manuscript to PubMed Central. At this time, most publishers acknowledge an author's right to submit the final peer-reviewed manuscript to PMC. Further, many publishers will submit the final published version to PMC automatically for you.

It is important to make sure you address these issues at the time the manuscript is accepted for publication. 

1. Make sure that you acknowledge NIH funding by citing the grant in the paper. In many cases, this may be the only step you need to take in order to get your paper into compliance.
2. Check whether the journal you will publish in is on the list of journals that submits to PMC automatically on your behalf.
3. If the journal you will publish in is not found there, you can check the journal's policy in the SHERPA/RoMEO database.
4. Note: this is very rare. For publishers that do not explicitly allow deposit in PMC, the NIH provides the following example of language that could be added to a publication agreement,

“Journal acknowledges that Author retains the right to provide a copy of the final peer-reviewed manuscript to the NIH upon acceptance for Journal publication, for public archiving in PubMed Central as soon as possible but no later than 12 months after publication by Journal.”

Method A: 

You've published in a journal that automatically submits to PMC. If you use this method, tasks related to the submission step of compliance will be completed for you by the publisher. It is important to let these publishers know that the article was NIH funded at the time of acceptance by acknowledging NIH funding in the paper.  You can search for your journal in this list of Method A journals.

Method B:

(used rarely) Make arrangements to have a publisher deposit your article in PMC. Submission to PMC is free, but some publishers will charge a fee to do this for you. Paying the publisher is not necessary if you or a third party submit the manuscript yourself (via Method C). Search the list of publishers that use Method B.

Method C:

Deposit the final peer-reviewed manuscript in PMC yourself via the NIH Manuscript Submission System (NIHMS). Submission can be done by the author or a third party in your lab or department. The manuscript must be approved at several steps by one of the authors or the PI (the "reviewer").

Method D:

This is a variation of method C. In this case, the publisher submits the manuscript to NIHMS, usually assigning the corresponding author as reviewer. NIHMS will contact the reviewer when the submission has been received by them. The reviewer is responsible for all approval tasks related to NIHMS processing following the initial deposit by the publisher. Search here for a list of publishers that submit via Method D.

Note: Regardless of the submission method used, you are still required to cite PMCIDs in NIH documents. For more information on this step of compliance see the next tab on citing PMCIDs.

Table summarizes tasks to complete for different types of deposit. Adapted from NIH Public Access Policy site.

To demonstrate compliance, all papers that fall under the NIH Public Access Policy must be cited using the PMCID or NIHMSID in all applications, proposals and reports submitted to the NIH.

• If the article was published more than three months ago, you must cite the PMCID.
• If the article was published less than three months ago and hasn't been assigned a PMCID yet, you must cite the NIHMSID (if using submission Methods C or D) or indicate "PMC Journal - In Process" (for Methods A or B).

More detail about the different ID types and when to use them is included below. Go to this link for information on locating a PMCID.

PMIDs and PMCIDs are not the same:

• PubMed ID (PMID) | This is the reference number assigned to all articles in PubMed. The PMID is linked with a paper's abstract in PubMed and is not associated with the NIH Public Access Policy
• PubMed Central ID (PMCID) | This is the reference number assigned to articles available in PubMed Central. A PMCID is linked to a full-text article availalbe in PMC. It is the ID you want to use when citing papers in NIH documents.
• NIHMSID (also called Manuscript ID) | After submitting a manuscript through the NIH Manuscript Submission system (NIHMS) through methods C or D, your manuscript will be assigned a NIHMSID. The NIHMSID can be used to signify compliance less than three months after publication for papers that have not yet been assigned a PMCID.

Note: For a given PMID (or list of them), you can use the PMCID/PMID/NIHMSID/DOI Converter to obtain the PMCID or NIHMSID if they exist.

Table summarizes what to cite for different types of deposit. Adapted from NIH Public Access Policy site.

Publications managed in EndNote (and other reference managers) can be easily exported into a bibliography in NIH format provided the PMIDs and PMCIDs have been imported into the program correctly. Below are instructions on two methods of importing citation information in EndNote and on how to export in the NIH format.

PubMed --> EndNote: upload file method

Better for uploading many articles at a time.

1. In PubMed, run your search and select the citations you'd like to export to Endnote [hint: you can "Send" citations to your "Clipboard" to save them aside until you've collected the full list there that you would like to export. Then go to "Clipboard" to send them all]
2. Click on the "Send to:" button and select "Citation Manager".
3. Make sure number of items listed here is equal to the number of items you expected to export. You can export all citations (up to 10,000), the ones of the current page, or the ones you've selected.
4. Click "Create File". A file will be saved/downloaded to your computer.
5. In EndNote, go to File menu and select Import -> File
6. Choose the file just downloaded from PubMed, and make sure "Import Option" is set to "PubMed (NLM)", the click "Import"
7. PubMed articles should import with PMIDs and PMCIDs.

PubMEd --> EndNote: search in EndNote method

Better for uploading only a few articles.

1. Within EndNote, go to Tools menu and select "Online Search"
2. From "Choose a Connection", select "PubMed (NLM)" and click "Choose"
3. You can search for individual articles by author, year, and/or title. The easiest way, though, is if you have the PMID. Select "PMID" and enter the PMID in the search box. Then click "Search" in the upper left.
4. Once you find the article you want, right click on it and select "Copy reference to..." and then select the library you want to add the reference to. 

Creating a bibliography in NIH Format

First you need to make sure you have the correct NIH style in EndNote. EndNote does come with an NIH style, however, it creates a bibliography that is numbered, which may not be wanted. To use an NIH format without numbers, you can download the following file.

Once you've downloaded the output style, follow the steps below to save it in the EndNote program:

1. Double-click on the downloaded style to open it.
2. It should open in the EndNote program.
3. In EndNote, go to the "File Menu" and choose "Save as.
4. "Remove the word "copy" from the end of the style's name, and then click the Save button.
5. Click on the "File Menu" and choose "Close Style."
6. Now the style should be saved in the EndNote program.

Note: The saved style will be located in the Documents > EndNote > Styles folder.

To create a bibliography:

1. From within your library, go to File menu and select "Export"
2. Select Save as type = "Text file" and select the output style. If you don't see the output style in the list, you can select it from a larger list by clicking on "Select another style..."
3. Click "Save". The file should be downloaded. You can cut and paste the output into Word or another program.