Dear Investigator:
According to the NIH Public Access Compliance Monitor, you have one or more article(s) stalled in the NIH Manuscript Submission NIHMS system and requires your attention immediately in order to move the article into PubMed Central and comply with the NIH Public Access Policy.
NIH will enforce its Public Access Policy by delaying processing of non-competing continuation grant awards with state dates of July 1, 2013 or beyond, if ALL publications arising from that NIH award do not list the PMCID (different from the PMID) to indicate the manuscript/article was deposited into the PubMed Central free public database. Articles arising from NIH funding must be deposited into PubMed Central PMC, where they are assigned a PMCID (starts with letters PMC followed by numerals.) Use of this PMCID in citation is needed to indicate compliance.
The full NIH statement:
Please log in to the NIHMS system at and select the “NIH & eRA Commons” log in link (on the left), which routes you through the NIH iTrust login portal to the NIHMS [NIH Manuscript Submission system].
Here you will find a list of manuscripts that require your attention. In some instances, multiple authors are non-compliant due to the same article.
In the Manuscript Summary please follow the instructions for the stalled manuscript. A stalled manuscript means it was uploaded into the NIHMS system, but not requires either an initial and/or final approval of the .pdf before it appears in PubMed Central and is assigned the PMCID.
In the Manuscript Summary, there may be some manuscripts for which you are not listed as the “actor.” If so, there are two options to get the manuscript “unstalled” and moving toward PubMed Central.
(1) contact the person who is listed as the most recent actor and request they log in and complete the steps to move the manuscript through the system.
(2) if the contact person is not available, you may “claim” the record by following the steps below. NOTE: the claim request must come from an author or PI associated with the paper, [not a designee] or the claim request will be denied.
To Claim a record in the NIHMS:
Log in at
Follow steps to move the “stalled” manuscript through the NIHMS system. Use the listed NIHMS ID to search and find to the Manuscript Summary. Here please request to “claim” a record, instead of “watch” the record. Claiming the record enables you to become the “actor” responsible for moving the stalled manuscript, (even though you are not the author/actor who submitted the manuscript to the NIHMS.)
Once a “claim” request is made, the individual currently responsible for the manuscript is notified. If that individual takes no action within a week, then (subject to NIHMS staff review) you will be notified by email that you can assume responsibility for the manuscript. Please look for the email from the NIHMS next week letting you know if you are now the “actor.” As actor, please approve the .pdf version and/or the web version to move the stalled manuscript through the NIHMS system to PubMed Central PMC. Once in PMC the PMCID is assigned. The PMCID is necessary in the citations in MyBibliography and progress reports to designate compliance of the work with the NIH Public Access Policy.
OR the article is not applicable:
In the Manuscript Summary, there may be a manuscript that needs to be removed from this list because it is not applicable to the NIH Public Access Policy because
- it was accepted for publication before April 7, 2008;
- or it is not a peer-reviewed article, or is a book chapter or dissertation or conference proceeding;
- or it was published in non-Latin script;
- or was not directly supported by a NIH grant. NOTE: the Compliance Monitor captures NIH grant info as found in the text (e.g. in the acknowledgements section) of articles. Sometimes authors acknowledge grants that did not directly fund the creation of their paper. Although the Compliance Monitor will identify such papers as non-compliant, they do not fall under the Public Access Policy.
Please see Determine Applicability at the FAQs
To Remove a paper:
1. Log in to My NCBI at this link
2. Go to My Bibliography and click on the “Manage My Bibliography” link.
3. Locate the non-compliant paper in your list of citations and click the “Edit Status” link next to the citation.
4. Select the reason this article is exempt from the submission requirements of the NIH Public Access Policy.
5. Save your changes but do NOT delete the citation from My Bibliography.
(When the Compliance Monitor is next updated it will capture your changes and the paper will be removed. The Compliance Monitor updates twice a week.)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As always if you have questions on specific articles, I am happy to help. Please send me the citation(s) of the article in question along with any problems you are experiencing.
~~Oliva
Oliva Smith
Division of Sponsored Programs DSP
100 Gilmore Hall
University of Iowa
319 335-3708