Does my journal do this for me?
PubMed Central (PMC) is an open access biomedical and life sciences archive, and is the designated repository for articles to comply with the NIH Public Access Policy and similar policies by other funders. The final publisher-produced versions of journal articles may be deposited to PMC by the publisher or the journal and do not require any author action. In other cases, an author may deposit the Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) to PubMed Central via the NIH Manuscript Submission system; the author will need to review and approve all AAM submissions.
To determine how to submit your paper:
- Check the Journal List: Search the PMC Journal List for the journal which will publish your article. To comply with the NIH Public Access policy, the Agreement to Deposit should specify either 'NIH funded articles' or 'All articles', and the Release Delay (Embargo) should be ''0 months (Immediate Release).
- If your journal indicates an embargo longer than 0 months, you need to work with the journal or publisher to have the article deposited without embargo or go to Step 3.
- Check the Selective Deposit Programs: search Selective Deposit Collections to find out if your publisher may deposit to PMC in cases where open access agreement is in place and the article is in a MEDLINE-indexed journal or the article acknowledges a PMC designated funder.
- Deposit the Author Accepted Manuscript: if neither of the publisher deposit options applies, you should deposit your author accepted manuscript via the NIH Manuscript Submission System (NIHMS).
- Begin the submission process when your article is accepted for publication to ensure that you have access to the needed files and to allow for manuscript processing time (up to 4 weeks).
Obtaining a PMCID
A PMCID is the unique identifier for each article in PubMed Central and is used to confirm compliance with the NIH Public Access policy and other funder policies. Each article will receive a PMCID after the article has been received and added to PubMed Central.
This page describes compliance codes for publications, how to manage compliance with My Bibliography, and how to assign awards to publications. For more information or additional questions, email nihaccess@gwu.edu.
Manage Compliance thru My Bibliography
Detailed instructions for Managing Compliance with the NIH Public Access Policy are provided by NIH.
Sections include:
Understanding Status Codes
An article can have one of the following statuses.
Any article with a red 'Non-compliant' or question mark, 'Edit Status' status needs your attention!
Click on the link associated with those articles (which could be an 'Edit Status', an NIHMS ID number, or a 'Citation not in NIHMS or PMC' link). The following box will open.
Use the given options to change the status of the citation.
Hints:
- If the article was accepted for publication before April 8th, 2008, it is exempt!
- If the article was a conference proceeding or editorial (i.e. not peer-reviewed), it is exempt, and you can Edit the status to report that the paper does not need to be submitted under the NIHPA. See instructions.
- If you are going to start Method C (submit it to NIHMS), you will need to upload the final peer-reviewed manuscript (this is not the final pdf the journal published).
Manage Compliance thru My Bibliography
After adding your citations to your My Bibliography and linking your eRA Commons account, set the Display Settings to the Award View as shown below.
This should then show you your citations with red, yellow, and green dots indicating the status of each citation (see example below).
Assign Awards
You should assign the correct awards to each citation in your My Bibliography.
- The "My awards" provides the list of awards associated with the P.I.'s eRA Commons profile.
- The "Other awards" section displays those awards that are not associated with the P.I.'s eRA Commons profile, but have been linked to citations in the My Bibliography collection.
