NIH Public Access Policy

The NIH Public Access Policy is an open access mandate established by the National Institutes of Health in 2008. The policy requires scientists to make the results of their NIH-funded research publicly available in NLM’s digital archive, PubMed Central (PMC) within 12 months of publication. When publishing these results in a peer-reviewed journal, scientists must deposit the final manuscript of their articles in PMC.

For an overview of the policy, visit the NIH's Public Access Policy website.

Submitting Your Article

• You must retain the right to deposit your article in PubMed Central (PMC)
• There are four methods of submission to PMC
• For two of the submission methods (A and B), the journal/publisher will submit your article for you
• For the other submission methods (C and D), you are required to submit your article to the NIH Manuscript Submission System (NIHMS)
• See Submission to PMC for more information

Reporting, Citing, and Managing Your Article

• You are required to provide the PubMed Central ID (PMCID) when citing your article
• If you have not been issued a PMCID, use the NIHMS number until you received the PMCID
• See After Submission to PMC for more information