NIH Public Access Policy
It’s not just a good idea;
It’s the law!
Public Access
• According to NIH policy, publications funded
fully or in part by federal grant money must be
made publically available
• To facilitate this, the NIH created PubMed
Central (PMC), an open-access database of
full-text manuscripts
• Federally funded publications deposited in
PubMed Central receive a PMCID as evidence
of compliance
PMID ≠ PMCID
• PMID (PubMed ID) is the unique ID given to
every paper indexed in PubMed
• PMCID (PubMed Central ID) is the ID given to
a paper that has been deposited into the
open-access database PubMed Central
• NIHMSID (NIH Manuscript Submission ID) is
the temporary ID given to a paper that has
been deposited through the NIHMS system
but has not yet been assigned a PMCID
Finding the PMCID
• In PubMed
a
Finding the PMCID
• With the PMID converter:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/pmctopmid/
Finding the PMCID
• A subset of journals will automatically deposit your
manuscript into PMC for you, for example:
– BMC Genomics
– Journal of Clinical Oncology
• The complete list is here:
http://publicaccess.nih.gov/submit_process_journals
.htm
• If you have submitted to one of these journals, your
paper will either have a PMCID or can be cited as
PMCID: PMC Journal – In Process
New Publications
• As soon as you receive notice of acceptance,
you can (and should!) deposit your manuscript
into PMC via the NIH Manuscript Submission
System (nihms.nih.gov)
• The submitted manuscript should be the final
version submitted to the publisher NOT the
PDF generated by the publisher as that is their
copyrighted property
New Publications
• Many publishers require exclusive rights to a
publication for a certain period of time (6
months, 1 year, etc.). This information can be
found in the For Authors section of the journal’s
website
• You still can (and should!) deposit your
manuscript into PMC immediately upon receipt
of acceptance. In the submission process, you can
indicate the delay of availability required by the
publisher
Non-Compliant Publications
• You can bring old publications into compliance
at any time using the NIHMS system
• Remember: All papers published after April,
2008, must have a PMCID if any of the work
was federally funded
• A guide to manuscript submission through
NIHMS is available in the CQS Member
Resources section of the CQS website
(cqs.mc.vanderbilt.edu)
Enforcing Compliance
• All awards with anticipated start dates on or
after July 1, 2013 must be 100% compliant
• NIH will delay processing of an award if
publications arising from it are not in
compliance with the NIH public access policy
• Vanderbilt will also be monitoring compliance
to assist with this initiative