NIH Public Access Policy

The Health Sciences Library offers free individual & group consultations on NIH Public Access Policy (NIHPAP) compliance.

Contact us to schedule an appointment:

• telephone on campus 4-3099 | off campus (631) 444-3099
• email
• Chat click the 'Chat is Online' button on the top right of all Library pages.
• SBU Answers the University Libraries knowledgebase; Ask a question, get an answer, or search our FAQ.

Distinguishing the Identifiers:

PMID = permanent PubMed citation/abstract identifier

PMCID = permanent PubMed Central full-text article identifier

NIHMSID = temporary manuscript submission identifier given to a manuscript processing through the NIHMS system to PubMed Central.

• The PMCID is required for NIHPAP compliance. The PMID is not required.
• The temporary NIHMSID will be replaced later by the permanent PMCID.
• PMCIDs correspond to an article's full text in PubMed Central and PMIDs to an article's citation and/or abstract in PubMed.
• Not all articles with PMCIDs will have PMIDs and vice versa.
• PMIDs do not substitute for PMCIDs.
• You can convert between these three numbers using this converter.

The two primary tools that are used to collect, manage, and submit articles are:

MyBibliography within MyNCBI

• My NCBI provides a free account with customized services for many databases operated by the National Library of Medicine's National Center for Biotechnology Information, including PubMed, PubMed Central and SciENcv. It allows you to save searches, collections of search results, create automated searches with e-mail alerts, create and manage NIH Biosketches, and most vital to the NIHPAP, manage your personal publications within My Bibliography.

• My Bibliography is a bibliographic management tool that allows you to collect your citations (journal articles, books/chapters, patents, presentations and meetings) directly from PubMed or, if not found there, by manual completion of template forms. My Bibliography allows eRA commons users to track compliance with the NIH public access policy, link grant awards to citations, and create lists of publications for NIH Biosketches and eRA Commons Grant Applications and Progress Reports.

The NIH Manuscript Submission System (NIHMS)

The NIH Manuscript Submission System (NIHMS) is where authors and publishers submit electronic version of peer-reviewed final manuscripts for entrance into PubMed Central. Some publishers handle the entire submission process while others require differing levels of author involvement. Any author on a paper may take responsibility for completing the submission process.