Guides & Tutorials: Posting Manuscripts to PubMed Central for NIH-funded Research

The NIH Public Access Policy

The NIH Public Access Policy implements Division G, Title II, Section 218 of PL 110-161 (Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2008). The law states:

The Director of the National Institutes of Health shall require that all investigators funded by the NIH submit or have submitted for them to the National Library of Medicine's PubMed Central an electronic version of their final, peer-reviewed manuscripts upon acceptance for publication, to be made publicy available no later than 12 months after the offical date of publication: Provided, That the NIH shall implement the public access policy in a manner consistent with copyright law.

You are not required to submit manuscripts for work that was funded by grants or awards given prior to April of 2008, although you may do so if you choose and if you own rights to the material.

It is important to address copyright issues before submitting a manuscript to the NIH Public Access Manuscript Submission system (NIHMS).

• If you have signed a contract with a publisher transferring rights to your manuscript to them, you will have to obtain permission to submit your manuscript to NIH for public access.

• Authors are urged by NIH to avoid signing such agreements, since they will not allow the author to comply with the policy.

• The NIH provides sample language to request in future copyright agreements with journal publishers:

"Journal acknowledges that Author retains the right to provide a copy of the final 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."

• If an author has submitted a manuscript to the NIH Public Access system that is copyrighted to a journal, journals may request to have the material removed from the Public Access system.

For other information on copyright issues, please consult the NIH FAQ page copyright section.

Please be aware that these are suggestions and guidelines as recommended by the NIH policy pages. They are not intended to be interpreted as legal counsel.

Here are the links to the submission system and helpful pages from the NIH:

• Submit your manuscripts at the NIHMS submission page

• There are also excellent submission tutorials located the NIHMS site

• The home page for the Public Access policy is a good starting place to read the policy and to link to other helpful pages

• The NIH maintains a comprehensive FAQ page for the NIH Public Access policy

Before you begin the submission process, check to see if the journal you are publishing with is one of the PubMed Central journals that will submit the manuscript for you.

You can find a list of PubMed Central (PMC) journals at the NIH submission policy site.

If you publish with one of these journals, you will still have to assign a grant reporting reference to the manuscript through the NIHMS system. This can only be done by a principal investigator (P.I.) thorugh the eRA link to NIHMS submission. Please refer to the grants reporting section of this guide for more information.

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Submitting the Manuscript

Below are some step-by-step instructions on submission to the NIHMS system:

• Log in to the NIHMS System through the link in the upper right corner of the submission page
• Select the proper category for your submssion type:

• You need an eRA commons profile to submit as a P.I.
• You need a myNCBI account to submit on behalf of someone else. A pop-up window will prompt you to log in to your myNCBI account. If you do not have one, you can register for one at this time. There is no fee for creating a myNCBI account.

• After logging in via the proper channel, click the button labeled "Submit New Manuscript"

What info do you need to begin?

• The name of the journal
• The manuscript title
• Grant number - Because this information is needed, it is recommended that someone familiar with the work submit the manuscript. This is usually either the principal investigator or first author of the paper.
• All the files necessary: What formats of file should you submit?
  • Use the final, peer-reviewed and edited version
  • This will usually be the double-spaced document format you use to submit for review.
  • Do NOT use the journal-formatted "reprint" PDF
  • Your manuscript can be a Word document or any format that is required by the journal to which you submitted.
  • Include any and all figures, tables, etc. They can be either embedded in the manuscript or included as separate files, but they must be submitted.
• Use the links supplied on the NIHMS starting page to help answer your questions about file formats.

Hit the "Continue" button on each submission page to proceed through the submission process. You will be prompted to supply all the necessary information. If you wish to discontinue the process, you may hit the "Cancel Submission" button on the lower left of each page.

If you get a message stating "Please use Grants Reporting to assign your grants to the article", this means that you have tried to submit a manuscript for a journal that belongs to the PubMed Central submission group, and they will do it for you. If you receive this message, go to the upper right corner of your submission page, and click on the "Grants Reporting" link:

Note: you must be signed in to eRA Commons as the principal investigator to do Grants Reporting or to see this link. You cannot do Grants Reporting if you are using the myNCBI submission process to submit for someone else.

Ask the Biosciences Librarian Pamela Shaw for assistance at 503-8689 or e-mail Pam.

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