Step 3: Reporting to NIH

When submitting any application, proposal, or report to the NIH, you must include the PMCID when citing applicable papers that you have authored or that arise from your NIH-funded research.  

Enhancements have been made in My NCBI, My Bibliography, and eRA Commons to facilitate compliance with the NIH Public Access Policy.  

Changes to My NCBI have improved workflow and communication between PD/PIs and non- PD/PI authors, making it easier for PD/PIs to track compliance of all papers arising from their awards, even if they do not author those papers.  information from My Bibliography is automatically shared with eRA Commons accounts, making that information easily available to upload to RPPRs.

All PD/PIs must now use the "My Bibliography" tool in their eRA-Commons-linked My NCBI account to manage their professional bibliographies, and all applicable papers must now be entered into My Bibliography to be reported to NIH.

NOTE: NIH will delay processing of non-competing continuation grant awards if any publications arising from that award are not in compliance with the NIH public access policy.

For non-competing continuation awards, use My NCBI to report papers...

1. Create a Commons linked My NCBI account. 

• A video overview of NCBI features (2:17)
• Instructions for creating an eRA Commons linked My NCBI account

2. Collaborate with your colleagues to associate publications with NIH awards, and track public access compliance or declare the paper is not applicable. 

• My Bibliography - New features for eRA Commons users (pdf)
• My Bibliography : Public Access Compliance (Video, 3:26)
• Managing compliance to the NIH Public Access Policy (pdf)

3. Report your papers via the RPPR.

To find an article’s PMCID to include when citing papers elsewhere (e.g., in proposals or applications)...

The PMCID is posted in PubMed as soon as an article has been successfully processed by PMC, which usually occurs around the time of publication. 

• Check your My Bibliography account -- The easiest way to find and track PMCIDs is to add the paper to My NCBI (using My Bibliography).  My NCBI will automatically add the PMCID to a citation as soon as it is available.

• Check PubMed --

If you know the article’s PMID (PubMed ID), go to PubMed , enter the article’s PMID in the search box and click "search". Set Display Settings to Abstract, and the article’s PMCID will be shown to the lower right under the abstract.

If you don’t know the article’s PMID, go to PubMed’s Single Citation Matcher and search for the article. Once the correct article is located, set - Display Settings to Abstract, and the article’s PMCID will be shown to the lower right under the abstract.

• Use NIH's PMCID - PMID - Manuscript ID - DOI Converter

• For additional assistance finding an article’s PMCID, contact a Reference Librarian at UPSTATE’s Health Sciences Library at (315) 464-7091 or library@upstate.edu.

For more information about including PMCIDs in citations, including appropriate placement of citations within documents and examples of citations, see detailed information on NIH’s webpage.