Managing NIH Public Access Compliance: Definitions

Here are some key definitions to help you keep things straight.

The NIH Manuscript Submission (NIHMS) system allows you to submit an electronic version of your peer-reviewed final manuscript for inclusion in PubMed Central.

• NIH Manuscript Submission System
• NIH Manuscript Submission Tutorials

Once submitted, your article will receive an NIHMSID # for tracking purposes.

NIH Public Access Policy:
Requirement to submit the final, peer-reviewed manuscripts of NIH-funded research to PubMed Central (PMC). 

Open Access (OA):
Literature that is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.

PubMed Central (PMC)
NLM's digital, open access archive of full-text, peer-reviewed journal articles.
Unique identifier: PMCID

PubMed:
Database of biomedical journal citations, abstracts and links to selected full text articles, including those in PubMed Central.
Unique identifier: PMID

Final Peer-Reviewed Manuscript
Author’s final manuscript accepted for journal publication after peer-review:

• Includes all modifications from the peer review process
• Electronic files of text, figures, tables, etc.
• May be submitted by Authors & Publishers

Final Published Article
Journal’s formatted, authoritative copy of the paper as published:

• Includes all modifications from peer review and the publishing process: copyediting, stylistic edits, and formatting changes
• May be submitted by Publishers/Journals only