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NIH Public Access Policy Help Guide

Explains the NIH Public Access Policy, the process for submitting peer reviewed articles to PubMed Central and using myNCBI to verify compliance.

Contact Your Librarian

Librarians can assist with questions about:

  1. locating PMCIDs and/or NIHMS IDs for submitted manuscripts;
  2. determining whether an article has already appeared in PubMed Central; or
  3. locating a journal’s general policy on NIH public access policy compliance.

Overview of the NIH Public Access Policy

The NIH Public Access Policy ensures that the public has access to the published results of NIH funded research. It requires investigators to submit final peer-reviewed journal manuscripts that arise from NIH funds to the digital archive PubMed Central upon acceptance for publication.  To help advance science and improve human health, the Policy requires that these papers are accessible to the public on PubMed Central no later than 12 months after publication.

The major components of complying with NIH Public Access Policy:

  • Determine Applicability
  • Address Copyright
  • Submit Manuscript to the NIH Manuscript Submission System (NIHMS) for Deposit into PubMed Central (PMC)
  • Show Evidence of Compliance

    The Principal Investigtor (PI) is ultimately responsible for ensuring compliance with the NIH Public Access Policy.

    In navigating compliance with NIH Public Access Policy, it may be helpful to keep in mind that there are multiple systems involved.  Here is a graphic displaying the systems mentioned in this help guide.

    NIH Public Access Policy Systems