The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) at the National Library of Medicine (NLM) has made initial updates to several offerings to support NIH-funded researchers and institutions to comply with the 2024 NIH Public Access Policy, which went into effect July 1, 2025. NCBI will continue to make ongoing improvements over the coming months.

What has been updated?

My Bibliography

My Bibliography is a reference tool that helps authors build a list of their published citations, either saved from PubMed or manually uploaded. When linked to an NIH eRA account, My Bibliography includes additional features that allow eRA Commons users to see whether their publications comply with NIH public access requirements. These features have now been updated to make it easier for users to check a citation's compliance status in alignment with the 2024 NIH Public Access Policy and make updates when needed.

Going forward, if a citation's publication date is on or after July 1, 2025, you will have the option to specify when the citation was accepted for publication. The acceptance date will determine which set of Public Access Policy rules to apply to the citation to determine compliance. Additionally, a new non-compliant status has been created, which indicates when a citation has been "Embargoed in PMC." This status will show up in My Bibliography to help indicate why a citation might be non-compliant under the 2024 NIH Public Access Policy (see Fig. 1).

Figure 1: New Section in My Bibliography to Assist with Policy Alignment.

PubMed Central (PMC) Submission Guidance

PMC's For Authors page has been updated to help authors determine whether their paper is eligible for submission to PMC, how it may be deposited, and by whom. Additionally, PMC has updated guidance on submission of online first (OLF) or early view published articles to support the 2024 NIH Public Access Policy requirements.

NIH Manuscript Submission (NIHMS) System

NIHMS facilitates the submission of author manuscripts for inclusion in PubMed Central in support of the NIH Public Access Policy. NIHMS has updated guidance and error messaging in its submission interface (see Fig. 2), as well as its Help documentation, to assist Reviewers in applying the correct embargo as outlined in the 2024 NIH Public Access Policy. NIHMS will continue to expand these updates and Help content in the coming months. To learn more about the NIHMS process, see the NIHMS FAQs.

Figure 2: Updated NIHMS interface to Improve Guidance and Error Messaging.

What's still to come?

The NIH Public Access Compliance Monitor (PACM)

PACM is a web-based tool that provides institutions who have received NIH awards with the current compliance status of all journal articles that are associated with that institution. It was developed as a service to recipients but is not an NIH reporting or monitoring tool. NCBI is exploring alternative strategies for helping institutions identify their funded articles and track manuscript submissions. In the meantime, PACM continues to use the 2008 NIH Public Access Policy rules in determining publication compliance status and does not reflect the new requirements of the 2024 NIH Public Access Policy. NCBI cannot ensure the reliability of compliance data in PACM in relation to the revised requirements.

Questions?

For more information, please refer to the NIH Public Access Policy webpage.

Please reach out to us if you have questions or would like to provide feedback.