Clarification on the Use of an NIHMSID to Indicate Compliance with the NIH Public Access Policy

(NOT-OD-09-136)
National Institutes of Health

NIH has observed that the NIHMSID is being used incorrectly to indicate compliance many months after the publication of a paper, by which time the awardee has had adequate time to complete the submission process and obtain the final PMCID.  Because the Policy requires submission at the time of acceptance and the NIH manuscript submission process can generally be completed within a few weeks, this is an unacceptable use of the NIHMSID. Effective August 21, 2009, an NIHMSID may be used to indicate compliance with the Public Access Policy for up to three months after a paper is published. After that period, a PMCID must be provided in order to indicate compliance.