If your article has already been published and is non-compliant, use these steps as a guide to obtain a NIHMS ID and eventually a PMCID.
- Contact the journal or publisher: The first step you take should be to contact the journal or publisher and request permission (it is best if the permission is in writing) to deposit the manuscript into the NIH Manuscript Submission System. Even if the publisher offers to upload the article for you, in the interest of timeliness, it is suggested that you instead upload the manuscript yourself.
- Determine the embargo: Depending on when the article was published, this step may be unnecessary. However, if the article was published less than one-year ago, you will need to determine the embargo date. When you upload your manuscript to NIHMS, you are required to provide an embargo period; this will determine when your article will be publicly available in PubMed Central. For articles deposited in PubMed Central, this embargo period may last no longer than one year from the official date of publication. If your article was published more than a year previous, no embargo period will apply to the publication.
- Double-check copyright: Double-check that the copyright agreement that you signed with the publisher allows for NIH Public Access Compliance. To date, NIH has reported no problems with publishers complying with the policy.
- Determine who is responsible for the article: Are you the only author on this publication? Most likely, you are not. If there are multiple investigators they will all be listed as non-compliant, and it will speed the process of compliance if a single person is determined responsible for bringing the article into compliance. NIHMS will not allow duplication of manuscripts in the system, so there are no compliance issues surrounding multiple uploads; however, there is no reason to duplicate efforts.
- Upload the manuscript using Method C: Depositing manuscripts to the NIH Manuscript Submission System (NIMHS) is easy and intuitive. NIHMS provides step-by-step instructions.