Manuscript Approval

The Manuscript Approval Form must be completed for all publications. The online form must be filled out, attached to a paper copy of the manuscript, and given to the LCB office for approval by the Lab Chief. (This can be done immediately after submission to a journal or publisher. Note: Form appears much better when opened with Internet Explorer than with Firefox or Netscape.)

You can request editing of your manuscript from the Fellows Editorial Board. Follow the link on their website on the left (How to Submit).

New NIH Public Access Mandate

The NIH Public Access Policy was mandatory as of April 7, 2008. From then onward, all NIH investigators (intramural and extramural) are required by law to submit, upon acceptance for publication, all final, peer-reviewed manuscripts to PubMed Central (PMC). The Policy applies to all peer-reviewed articles that you author or co-author as part of your official NIH duties, even if the corresponding author or other authors are not supported by NIH.

The law states:

“The Director of the National Institutes of Health shall require that all investigators funded by the NIH submit or have submitted for them to the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed Central an electronic version of their final, peer-reviewed manuscripts upon acceptance for publication, to be made publicly available no later than 12 months after the official date of publication: Provided, that the NIH shall implement the public access policy in a manner consistent with copyright law.”

What kinds of papers are covered by this policy?

The policy applies to peer-reviewed publications that have been supported, in whole or in part, by NIH funds. The policy does not apply to book chapters, editorials, or conference proceedings.

The author or designated assistant submits the source document--a final manuscript (e.g., Word doc) with its figures (in any one of several formats) upon acceptance for publication. The final version archived includes all modifications from the publishing peer-review process.

When self-archiving, the publisher’s PDF version should NOT be deposited. Only the publisher can submit a journal’s PDF version.

How do I comply with this new regulation?

As an author you have three options:

1. Submit to a journal that takes care of submitting files for you. Here is the list of journals that deposit final published articles in PubMed Central. Since 2008, the system has evolved and there are now four ways that papers can be submitted. In some cases the publisher initiates the process, but information about the article and its funding source(s) still needs to be entered by an author. In this case, the PI will receive an email from the NIH Manuscript Submission System requesting this information.

2. Designate a staff member to submit manuscripts for you.

3. Archive the final version of your manuscript yourself with the NIH Manuscript Submission system. For a slide show that demonstrates how to do this, click here.

>Enter basic information about the manuscript and contact information

>Upload manuscript file(s)

>System will generate a receipt of the uploaded files in PDF format

>Submitter confirms that the manuscript and any additional supporting documents have been successfully received by NIHMS

>Email is sent to the Principal Investigator (PI) to approve the PDF and indicate NIH support for the manuscript

>Submission is complete

Upon approval by the PI, the manuscript will be converted into XML—the standardized digital format used by PubMed Central. This process takes about 1-2 weeks depending on the manuscript. After the conversion process, a preview of the article as it will appear in PubMed Central will be made available, allowing the PI to correct any errors if necessary. After final approval, the article will be publicly accessible through PubMed Central after the time-delay specified by the PI.

NIH Publishing Agreement

When submitting your manuscript, you must use the NIH Publishing Agreement & Manuscript Cover Sheet. You must not sign any publisher’s agreement received from the publisher. Details on how to use this can be found at the NIH Public Access website. As we understand it at this point, the agreement form should be completed, signed by one NIH author, and attached with the cover letter when the paper is submitted. To facilitate this, here is a MicrosoftWord version of the agreement. When the paper is accepted, each of the NIH authors will need to sign one of the forms, and they should be sent to the publisher.

Additional information regarding the NIH Public Access policy can be found at: http://publicaccess.nih.gov/

Do I need to submit files for my accepted paper?

Each journal or publishing company has its own policy concerning submission to this system. Some journals submit and approve the files for all NIH-funded articles. Others will only do this if the author requests it. In some cases, the author must submit and approve the files. In that case, the author must indicate how many months PubMed Central should wait before releasing the paper to the public (according to rules of the publisher, but no longer than 12 months). A forth situation is when the publisher begins the process of submitting the paper, but the author must later approve the files before the paper is displayed. Many of the large publishing companies now follow this route, such as Elsevier, Nature, AACR, and Springer. For more details, see "Submission Methods."

In any case, according to the law, the author is responsible to see that the paper is deposited with PubMed Central "upon acceptance."