NIH Public Access Policy

To see grant information and link grants to your papers, you must be logged in to your My Bibliography via eRA Commons (or Login.gov, if that is your Commons login method). Look for the eRA Commons logo near the top of your My Bibliography. This confirms you are logged into My Bibliography via a Commons account.

Funding information is visible next to each publication in your bibliography (sometimes located below the publication, depending on your web browser window width). These boxes are color coded by compliance status.

• A darker red box with a question mark indicates that no funding has yet been attributed to the paper so its status is currently Not defined
• A lighter red box with an exclamation point indicates that the manuscript is subject to the laws of the NIH mandate (has been linked to one or more NIH awards) but is not compliant (does not have a PMCID)
• A blue box means that the citation has been submitted to the NIH Manuscript Submission system OR has been submitted by the journal to PMC and is considered in process
• A green box with a checkmark means the citation is compliant with the NIH Public Access Policy.  You can also see a PMCID in this view.

• A grey box: Articles that were accepted for publication prior to April 7, 2008 are not covered by the NIH Public Access Policy. These citations will be marked as N/A for Not Applicable (this status is also automatically applied to citation types that are not journal articles, e.g., book chapters, patents, presentations)

Click the Edit Status, Add award or [x number] Awards link in any box to open the funding attribution wizard.

• If you click on Edit Status for a publication that does not yet have awards linked to it, you have the option of indicating that a publication was not funded by NIH funds and therefore not subject to the terms of the NIH Public Access Policy, click No and you are done with your compliance reporting for that manuscript

  • Otherwise, click Yes, and the wizard window will expand, allowing you to submit the manuscript to NIHMS, or indicate other arrangements or conditions
    

• If you click on Add award (or [x number] awards), the funding attribution panel will open with the "NIH Awards" tab selected, showing you Your Awards (in the top portion of the Assign Awards panel) and Other Awards available for you to assign to manuscripts in the bottom portion of the panel
  

• Click checkboxes next to awards you wish to link to a manuscript, then click the Close button. Your bibliography will refresh and update automatically.

  • To add an award to multiple publications at a time: You can click checkboxes next to multiple citations in your bibliography and use the Manage awards  option (at the top of your bibliography in the "Manage citations" dropdown menu) to associate multiple papers to a grant

• If you don't see the award you want to assign in the Assign Awards panel, you can search for awards to assign. Use the Search/Add Other Awards tab in the Assign Awards box to search for grants by grant number or investigator name. Click on the chosen award.
  

• Click Close when you are done with the Awards panel. Your bibliography will refresh and automatically update.

• NCBI will import the publications into the bibliographies of any Principal Investigator(s) whose awards you link to a manuscript.