Skip to Main Content

NIH Public Access Compliance: Additional Questions

This LibGuide will walk users through issues of compliance with the NIH

Why does a publication have a PMCID but is not visible in PubMed Central?

Current NIH Public Access Policy allows for up to a 12-month embargo on publications submitted to PubMed Central. An embargo is a delay, specified by the publisher, in when the publication can be made available in PubMed Central after the publication date. If a publication is subject to an embargo, it will not impact the compliance status of your publication. If the publication has been assigned a PMCID, it is considered compliant for any RPPRs that you might submit. 

If a publication has been given a PMCID but is subject to an embargo, generally the embargo is specified next to the PMCID on the PubMed Entry. Here is an example:

A publication is in process at NIHMS, why is it listed as non-compliant?

NIH has said that only publications that are "in progress" within 90 days of publication will be considered compliant (for the purposes of an RPPR). Therefore, if a publication is "in process" with the manuscript submission system, but it is past the 90-day mark, you might see the non-compliant status in My NCBI and in eRA commons like the example below. 

I published open access. Why is my publication not in PubMed Central?

There are multiple ways that a publication can be deposited into PubMed Central. Some publishers will deposit them automatically; others will conditionally deposit them. Some do not deposit publications at all. Thus, the responsibility falls on the authors of the publication to ensure that it is publicly-available in PubMed Central. 

If you publish in an open access journal or pay for a publication to be published open access, it does not mean that your publication is automatically made publicly available in PubMed Central. Be sure to carefully read the journal’s public access policy and/or your publishing agreement to determine if a publication will be deposited for you. You can reach out to your contact at the journal or publisher to check if they will deposit the publication for you. 

You can always contact the author of this guide to get assistance with determining how your publication is to be deposited into PubMed Central. 

It is important to note: depositing the author's accepted manuscript into PubMed Central yourself is free. To do this, visit the "How do I make this paper compliant?" tab. 

A publication is compliant but is listed twice on the eRA Commons Compliance Report. Why?

There are two most common reasons for a citation to appear twice on an eRA Commons Compliance Report: 

1) A grant has more than one PI. Is this the case for the grant you are working on?

  • If your answer is yes, then you do not need to do anything. eRA Commons is importing citations from more than one My Bibliography which can lead to publication duplication on an RPPR.
  • If the answer is no, then proceed to #2. 

2) If there is only one PI on the grant, then there might be a duplicate citation of the publication in the My Bibliography, particularly if you had to manually enter the publication at some point in the past. The easiest way to address this is to search the My Bibliography for the publication (top right) and see how many citations are listed.

  • If you have a manually-entered citation and a PubMed citation for the same publication, delete the manually-entered citation from your My Bibliography. It is always preferable to use the PubMed citation for a publication.
  • There is also a chance that you have two manually-entered citations for the same publication. If this is the case, delete one of the citations.