NIH Public Access Policy: Submission Method C

Review NIH Manuscript Submission (NIHMS): Deposit and Initial Approval (6:14 min) or follow the steps listed below to submit your manuscript. 

Submission Method C requires the author or his/her delegate deposit the final peer-reviewed manuscript to the NIH Manuscript Submission System and link to NIH funding.

Note 1:  If you have an ERA commons login, use that to log in to the NIHMS system. If you do not have an ERA Commons login or are a delegate, use the NCBI log in option. It is important that you always use the same method to log in to NIHMS.

Note 2: Springer Nature no longer offers a manuscript deposition service to their NIH-funded authors. Authors (usually the corresponding author) or their assigned delegate, would now be responsible for handling the task of depositing the accepted manuscript in the NIHMS system to fulfil any funder or institutional mandate. Follow the Submission Method C instructions outlined below for self-depositing. Springer Nature will continue to automatically deposit gold open access (OA) articles in PMC (PubMed Central) and EPMC (Europe PubMed Central) if the research papers meets the PMC deposition guidelines on publisher deposition of papers published open access.  Authors can confirm if a journal has a full PMC deposition agreement by searching for the journal title here.

Before you begin the submission process, have the following information available:

•Journal name
•Manuscript title
•Grant numbers
•Manuscript files (could include figures, tables, supplementary data)
•Journal embargo period

Step 1: Log in
http://nihms.nih.gov

Additional guidance for manuscript submission, please click the appropriate link(s) below for information:

• Creating and Managing Delegates - The delegator needs to grant access to the delegate to manage non-compliant papers. Note that it is important for the author (delegator) to address the final NIHMS approval email to review the format and content of the paper:
• Managing Public Access Compliance as a Delegate
• Manuscript Submission Process - Overview of Steps

Step 2: Designate support
Author/Delegate selects the journal name, enters the manuscript title, and selects all appropriate (NIH and/or HHMI) funding mechanisms that supported the manuscript. The NIHMS ID will only be assigned after the manuscript and all related files have been uploaded.

Step 3: Upload manuscript
Author/Delegate uploads the manuscript and any associated file(s). The system will generate a receipt of the uploaded files in PDF format. The PDF receipt summarizes the information entered into the system, and merges the manuscript's files into one viewable document. Author/Delegate confirms that the manuscript and any additional supporting documents have been successfully received by NIHMS.

Step 4: Submission agreement and processing
An email will be sent to the Principal Investigator (PI) or corresponding author to approve the PDF and indicate the release date when the manuscript will be made publicly available on PMC. The PDF receipt needs to be opened and reviewed before the submitter can advance to the next step. Upon approval by the PI/author, the manuscript will be converted to a PMC-formatted version.

Step 5: Approval of the converted manuscript (web version)
After the conversion process, a second email is sent to the PI/author to review the version that will appear in PMC. At this time corrections may be requested, if necessary. After final approval, the article will be publicly accessible through PMC after the embargo period specified by the PI/author. ONLY the PI or an author can approve the formatted version for PMC.  This task should not be handled by the Delegate.