NIH Public Access Policy

Full text (along with all figures, tables and supplemental material) of manuscripts funded by NIH grants awarded April 2008 or after must be available in PubMed Central (PMC), upon first publication online or in print, with no embargo. 

These papers must also display a PubMed Central ID (PMCID) by publication date, but if manuscripts are still in process at NIHMS by the publication date, the NIHMSID can be used in lieu of the PMCID for up to 3 months after the publication date. (NIH Public Access FAQ B5: https://grants.nih.gov/faqs#/public-access-policy?anchor=57482)

Many journals will deposit manuscripts to PubMed Central automatically. Others will deposit articles for authors upon request. You may never have to worry about depositing a manuscript to PMC yourself through the NIH Manuscript Submission System (NIHMS).

If your journal doesn't deposit for you, it is our recommendation that the submissions to PMC via NIHMS are made by authors (or their delegates) who are responsible for the final revisions of the manuscript(s) and who have access to coauthors' NIH grant numbers. It takes only about 10 minutes to submit a manuscript, if you have all the files ready for upload.

Before you decide to deposit your paper via NIHMS, you might want to check to see if the paper has a PMCID already in process.

Use the PMID to PMCID Converter
The NIH maintains a converter tool that allows you to look up PMCIDs (or other identifiers). Simply input a single PMID or list of PMIDs to retrieve any PMCIDs, if they exist. If a PMCID does not exist for a paper, that is a good indication that you should begin depost to PubMed Central via the NIHMS system.

Submission methods

The NIH has updated their pages on the various submission methods to get manuscripts into PubMed Central, taking into account

1.  The version of the manuscript which is deposited (the final published version or the author accepted manuscript (AAM)
2. Who deposits that version to PubMed Central or to NIHMS
3. How to cite papers in process

There is an overview of these methods available at the NIH Submitting to PubMed Central page.

There is a detailed set of instructions and considerations for authors to determine eligibility, submission method and deposit systems available at the For Authors page at the PubMed Central site.