NIH Public Access Policy

For further details and questions on the process, use the NIH Public Access Website and their FAQs.

1. Speak with the journal/publisher

It is essential to understand your rights as an author even before submitting your manuscript. Speak with the publisher or read their online information about their workflow for compliance. Tell them you need to comply with the NIH Public Access Policy. If possible, select a journal that already has copyright policies that comply with the public access policy in place.

2. Determine how your manuscript will be deposited into PMC - Methods A-D

There are four routes for getting articles into PMC, depending on the journal the article is published in, whether it was published open access, and what method the publisher has chosen. It is important to find out what method the chosen journal uses prior to acceptance for publication.

3. Report to NIH

Use My Bibliography in My NCBI to report your manuscript. My Bibliography is a tool available in My NCBI that allows you to add citations and link awards to those citations. Once you link your eRA Commons account to My NCBI, you’ll also be able to track the compliance status of your citations in My Bibliography. 

1. Login or create a My NCBI account. 
   1. Use your eRA Commons account to login. 
   2. If you don’t have an eRA Commons account, use a different third-party login option, such as ORCID.
2. If you have an existing My NCBI account, link your eRA commons account so that award information will appear in My Bibliography. 
3. Add citations to My Bibliography. 
4. Add awards to those citations and start/update compliance if necessary.

With citations and awards added to My Bibliography, you'll be able to create a Research Performance Progress Report (RPPR) that shows compliance with the NIH Public Access Policy.

For Methods A & B, the publisher provides the final published article directly to PMC on the behalf of the author. Starting July 1, 2025, articles must be in PMC upon the official date of publication. While C & D are more common methods, it is important to verify that the journal you are publishing in does not use A or B first.

Method A

Participating journals deposit all peer-reviewed, NIH-funded articles in PMC. Authors do NOT have to deposit their manuscript into NIHMS, but they must follow the steps to compliance below.

• Find out if the journal you are publishing in is under Method A by searching the list of journals on the NIH website. Make sure the date of publication is within the start and end date. If your journal does not appear in this list, move on to Method B.

Method B

paid open access articles that are published with selected journals have an agreement with NIH to deposit the final article in PMC when notified by the author that an article falls under the policy.

Steps to compliance for Methods A and B

1. Search the list of journals corresponding to Method A and/or review the selected journals corresponding to Method B.
2. Let the publisher know that the article falls under NIH's policy during the submission and acceptance process, most importantly if the journal falls under Method B.
3. Add the citation to My Bibliography (the publisher cannot complete this step for an author).
4. Associate the fund(s) that applies to the article in My Bibliography.

Most articles under the Public Access Policy will fall in Method C or D. These methods require the Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) to be deposited into the NIH Manuscript Submission System (NIHMS) to be made accessible in PMC. For Method C the author or their delegate deposits the AAM into NIHMS themself. For Method D, authors notify the journal/publisher of the requirement and the journal/publisher deposits the AAM into NIHMS on behalf of the author. Use the step by step guidance on the NIH Public Access Policy website linked below to work through this process.

Method C

1. Upload your author accepted manuscript (not the final published article) into NIHMS. The NIHMS has a video overview, illustrated submission tutorials and an FAQ.
2. Associate funding to the article and provide the Initial Approval of the material.
3. Wait for NIHMS to covert your files to a PubMed Central ready document
4. Approve the final version of the PubMed Central document. The assigned reviewer will receive ONE email from NIHMS as a notification to do this.
5. Your article is given a PMCID and is now compliant. Update your NCBI "My Bibliography" to confirm this.

Method D

1. Confirm that the Publisher has submitted your files. Do this by searching NIHMS using the article's title or PMID. If no record exists for your publication, contact your publisher.
2. Wait for an email from NIHMS to perform your initial approval. All members of the author team and the PI should be alert for this email. Typically, the publisher will choose the corresponding author or the last author, but there is not standard. Each journal has their own method for this and may or may not let you know what that method is.
3. Perform the initial approval when the email is received.
4. Wait for NIHMS covert your files to a PubMed Central ready document.
5. Approve the final version of the PubMed Central document. The assigned reviewer will receive ONE email from NIHMS as a notification to do this.
6. Your article is given a PMCID and is now compliant. Update your NCBI "My Bibliography" to confirm this.