Important Dates to Note

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NIH Public Access Policy How to Locate and Cite
the PMCID Reference Number
Important Dates to Note As of April 7, 2008
The revised NIH Public Access Policy stipulates
that NIH-funded investigators are required to
submit, or have someone submit on their behalf,
their final peer-reviewed manuscript to PubMed
Central upon acceptance of their publication to
be made publicly available with 12 months of
publication. This applies to NIH-funded
manuscripts accepted for publication on or after
April 7, 2008. As of May 28, 2008 NIH
applications, proposals, and progress reports
must include the PubMed Central reference number
(PMCID) when citing an article that falls under
the NIH Public Access Policy and is authored or
co-authored by the investigator, or arose from
the investigators NIH award. This policy
includes applications, proposals and progress
reports submitted to the NIH for the May 25, 2008
due date and subsequent due dates. The PMCID
will need to be noted on documents such as
Literature Cited section and the Publication List
that are included as part of applications,
proposals, and progress reports. All
manuscripts added to PubMed Central (PMC) are
assigned a unique identifier called a PubMed
Central reference number (PMCID). This number is
assigned to the submitted manuscript after the
final quality assurance check by PMC. Until the
PMCID is assigned, a NIH Manuscript Submission
system reference number (NIHMS ID) is used
instead. The PMCID number is NOT THE SAME as the
PubMed Identifier number (PMID). PMID is unique
to PubMed. All publications submitted to Pubmed
Central are added to the PubMed citation database
regardless of journal indexing status and these
will have a PMID and a PMCID. NIH-funded authors
should use the PMCID, not the PMID, in order to
comply with the revised NIH Public Access
Policy. Where to locate the PMID and PMCID
Reference Numbers Below are examples of where
you can locate these numbers. Remember that the
PMID can be found when displaying your PubMed
search results as Summary. For viewing the
PMCID, change the display to AbstractPlus. On the
AbstractPlus display, you will find the PMCID
under the citation/abstract on the right side.
This is the number to include on NIH proposals,
applications, and progress reports.
Locate PMID number by selecting Summary
Locate PMCID number by selecting AbstractPlus
PMCID Reference Number
PMID Identifier Number
Last Updated September 2008 Memorial
Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center Library Reference
212.639.7439
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The following example shows a publication in PMC
that has an embargo period. In this instance,
the publisher has completed the submission
process at PMC but the full text will not be
available for free public viewing in PMC until
the expiration of the embargo period in 07/01/09.
Locating PMCID in PMC The PMCID is included in
the citation.
How to Cite the PMCID Below is an example of how
you should cited the number. Example Zang X,
Thompson RH, Al-Ahmadie HA, Serio AM, Reuter VE,
Eastham JA, Scardino PT, Sharma P, Allison JP.
B7-H3 and B7x are highly expressed in human
prostate cancer and associated with disease
spread and poor outcome. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S
A. 2007 Dec 4104(49)19458-63. PMCID PMC2148311
For other examples view http//publicaccess.nih
.gov/FAQ.htmc6
Last Updated September 2008 Memorial
Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center Library Reference
212.639.7439
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• The NIH Manuscript Submission System reference
  umber (NIHMS ID) should be cited instead if there
  is not PMCID reference number available yet. The
  NIHMS ID is the reference number used by PMC
  until a PMCID ID reference is assigned at the end
  of the quality assurance process. The NIHMS ID
  reference number is available via the NIHMS
  system. NIH-funded authors can locate the NIHMS
  ID by accessing their eRA Commons account at
  https//commons.era.nih.gov/commons/
• If neither reference number is available, cite
  PMCID pending
• Note As of April 28,2008 NIH has reported that
  there may be delay in assigning a PMCID to
  articles submitted from journals that participate
  with NIH. NIH is requesting that these citations
  be noted as PMC Journal In Process until the
  PMCID is available.
• Importing the PMCID and NIHMS ID to Bibliographic
  Citation Software
• As of March 28, 2008, new fields tags were made
  available in the MEDLINE record.
• PMC for noting the PMCID reference number
• MID for noting the NIHMS reference number
• The PubMed import filter from EndNote and
  Reference Manager can be modified to include the
  field tags. RefWorks has added the PMCID field to
  its product. They have NOT added the NIHMS ID tag
  field.
• Please contact the Reference Librarians at
  212.639.7439 for additional information or to
  walk through these steps.

Adapted from document originally created by
Molly Kenner, Coy C. Carpenter Library, Wake
Forest University School of Medicine
Last Updated September 2008 Memorial
Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center Library Reference
212.639.7439
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