NIHMS Overview

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) developed the NIH Manuscript Submission (NIHMS) system to facilitate the submission of peer-reviewed manuscripts for inclusion in PubMed Central (PMC) in support of the NIH Public Access Policy. Since its inception in 2005, NIHMS has expanded to support the public access policies of other organizations and government agencies (for more details, see the Funders list).

Manuscript Submission Process

The NIHMS system allows users such as authors, principal investigators, and publishers to supply material for conversion to XML documents in a format that can be ingested by PMC. Depositing a manuscript in NIHMS for inclusion in PMC is a multi-step process, requiring an author to approve the deposited files and associated funding before conversion and the PMC-ready documents after conversion.

Additional information on using the NIHMS system may be found in the NIHMS FAQ and Glossary.

Step	Description
	Step 1: A manuscript may be submitted by the author, the PI, the publisher, or another third party. Third-party submitters must designate an author or PI to serve as the Reviewer for an NIHMS submission. In these cases, the Reviewer will receive notification of the deposit via e-mail.
	Step 2: The Reviewer reviews the submission, confirms or adds associated funding, and either rejects or approves the material for processing in NIHMS.
	Step 3: NIHMS staff reviews the approved files for completeness, and complete submissions are converted to archival XML. The PMC-ready documents (Web and PDF versions) are checked to ensure they accurately reflect the submitted files. An e-mail notification is sent to the Reviewer when the record is available for final review.
	Step 4: The Reviewer reviews the PMC-ready documents (Web and PDF versions) and either requests corrections or approves them for inclusion in PMC. Final Approval is required to complete manuscript processing in NIHMS.
	Step 5: A PMCID is assigned when Final Approval is complete and the manuscript is matched to a PubMed record with complete citation information. For details, see When will a PMCID be assigned to my manuscript?
	Step 6: The manuscript is made available in PMC following the publisher-required embargo period (if applicable).