During the Author Accepted Manuscript submission process, you must agree to a standard license that mirrors that of the Government Use License or its successor regulations, explicitly granting NIH the right to make the Author Accepted Manuscript publicly available through PubMed Central without embargo upon the Official Date of Publication.
NIHMS allows you to you to submit an electronic version of your final peer-reviewed manuscript or the Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) for inclusion in PubMed Central. In January 2015, the NIHMS system was redesigned with a new look.
To comply with the 2008 NIH Public Access Policy, any of the four Methods - i.e., A, B, C, or D - will work.
To comply with the 2024 NIH Public Access Policy, so far, JH Libraries recommends that Method C or D is followed with a higher preference for Method C.
Regardless, publishing Gold/Hybrid Open Access or Green/Diamond Open Access requires that you deposit the AAM into PMC's NIHMS in order to comply with either the 2008 or 2024 NIH Public Access Policies.
Below is a screenshot of the login page:
The NIHMS System User's Guide to Submitting a Manuscript - This user’s guide gives you step-by-step instructions on how to submit and approve manuscripts so that they may be placed into PubMed Central (PMC).
NIHMS System Slide Show Help - The NIHMS System Slide Shows demonstrates how to perform various actions in a step-by-step fashion and are illustrated with screen captures.
The following FAQs link to slide shows that demonstrate step-by-step procedures illustrated with screen captures of the NIHMS website.
The NIHMS website has additional FAQs.
There are four approaches to submitting articles to PubMed Central (PMC): Methods A, B, C, and D.
The method selected depends upon the degree to which the article journal/publisher participates in the process and whether a Final Published Article (Method A or B) or the Author Accepted Manuscript (Method C or D) is deposited.
The NIH Public Access submissions methods page provides an overview of how these methods differ, information about the journals and publishers that participate in each method, and step-by-step instructions.
The NIH Manuscript Submission System (NIHMS) is required for submission Methods C and D.
You must complete approval steps in NIHMS to ensure timely PMCID assignment, specifically:
This brief tutorial outlines the process for automatic submission to PubMed Central (PMC), in which certain journals (called Method A journals) handle the Final Published Article submission process for you no later than 12 months after publication without author involvement.
NIH maintains a list of Method A Journals.
This brief tutorial outlines the process in which authors request that certain publishers (called Method B publishers) submit articles to PubMed Central (PMC). These publishers and journals have an agreement with NIH to post individual Final Published Articles in PubMed Central (PMC) on a case-by-case basis. These journals do not automatically post every NIH-funded paper in PMC. Rather, the author can choose to arrange with the journal to post a specific article; this usually involves choosing the journal’s fee-based open access option for publishing that article.
Publishers usually charge for this service. NIH maintains a list of Method B publishers.
This brief tutorial outlines the steps that an author takes to submit a manuscript through the NIH Manuscript Submission System (NIHMS).
Authors should follow these steps if their journals/publishers will not submit articles directly to PubMed Central (PMC), as in Methods A and B above.
In Method C, the author or a delegate deposits the final peer-reviewed manuscript or Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) into the NIH Manuscript Submission system (NIHMS)
Some publishers (called Method D publishers) will submit manuscript files to the NIH Manuscript Submission System (NIHMS) for the author. The author is responsible for the remaining steps in the NIHMS process. This brief tutorial outlines all of these steps.
NIH maintains a list of Method D publishers.
Authors should follow these steps if their journals/publishers will not submit articles directly to PubMed Central (PMC), as in Methods A and B above, and if their publishers submit their manuscripts directly to NIHMS.
In Method D, the publisher deposits the final peer-reviewed manuscript or Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) into the NIHMS. Regardless of who starts and manages the submission process, authors and awardees are responsible for ensuring that the final, peer-reviewed manuscript is deposited into the NIHMS upon acceptance for publication.
You can use Hopkins PASS to submit your author's final peer-reviewed manuscripts to PubMed Central and Hopkins' institutional repository (JScholarship) simultaneously, and comply with the NIH public access policy and the Hopkins Open Access Policy, but you need to be responsible and responsive to approving the steps for the Author Accepted Deposit by being active in NIHMS and in My NCBI's My Bibliography.