Submission Process

To facilitate submission of final peer-reviewed manuscripts to PubMed Central (PMC), NIH developed the NIH Manuscript Submission (NIHMS) system (http://www.nihms.nih.gov/).  There are detailed online instructions for the NIHMS at http://www.nihms.nih.gov/web-help/index.html.  As an overview, here is how the NIHMS is used to collect final peer-reviewed manuscripts for PubMed Central:

• Authors or someone in their organization (e.g., an assistant or a librarian) can log on to the NIHMS to submit a copy of the accepted final peer-reviewed manuscript and associated files (e.g., Microsoft Word document and figures).
• The submitter designates the NIH funding that supported the final peer-reviewed manuscript.
• The Principal Investigator (PI) of the designated funding approves the submission, and affirms that copyright allows deposit to PMC.
• The NIHMS will convert the deposited files into a standard PMC format, and will email the PI to review the PMC-formatted final peer-reviewed manuscript to make any necessary corrections and approve its release.
• The NIHMS will automatically send the final peer-reviewed manuscript to PubMed Central for public posting after the delay period specified during submission.

Some journals will deposit final peer-reviewed manuscript files on behalf of their authors through the NIHMS. When this happens, authors still have to provide the associated award information, and review and approve the final peer-reviewed manuscript. The NIHMS will contact them by email to do so.