NIH Public Access Policy FAQ

Anyone submitting an application, proposal or report to the NIH must include the PubMed Central reference number (PMCID) when citing applicable papers that they author or that arise from their NIH-funded research. Review all the actions to comply with the NIH Public Access Policy.

We recommend that when you are preparing your biosketch for an application to check that a PMCID is included at the end of citations to ensure compliance. The easiest way to find and track PMCIDs is to add the paper to your My NCBI account, specifically My Bibliography. My NCBI will automatically add the PMCID to a citation as soon as it is available. 

We also recommend checking progress reports for compliance. The Research Performance Progress Report (RPPR) draws from every paper in the PI’s My Bibliography collection, so keeping My Bibliography updated is a great strategy. 

Do you also have data subject to the NIH Data Management and Sharing Policy? If your article contains data supporting your research claims, you must also make that data publicly available (if applicable) in an appropriate data repository. To ensure your compliance with the DMS Policy, confirm that your data has been deposited into a repository and has a unique digital identifier linked to your article. Read more about the NIH Data Management and Sharing Policy.