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NIH Manuscript Submission (NIHMS) System

The NIH Manuscript Submission System (NIHMS) is a free web-based system administered by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to facilitate the deposit of peer-reviewed manuscripts into PubMed Central (PMC).  The NIH Public Access Policy requires that NIH-funded research be made publicly available in PMC.

Who uses NIHMS?

NIHMS allows authors, principal investigators, and publishers to submit manuscripts, which are converted into a format suitable for PubMed Central.

While NIHMS was originally developed to facilitate submission of NIH-funded manuscripts, it now supports the public access policies of several other organizations and federal agencies besides NIH including AHRQ, ACL, ASPR, CDC, DHS, EPA, FDA, NIST, and the VA. Submission to NASA PubSpace have moved from the NIHMS system to the NASA STI Program.

While the grant awardee/PI is responsible for ensuring manuscripts are compliant, it is typically the corresponding author that submits the manuscripts to NIHMS. But any author may submit the final manuscript, and a delegate may be assigned to upload the manuscript for the author.

The 2024 NIH Public Access Policy requires that Author Accepted Manuscripts accepted for publication in a journal on or after July 1, 2025, to be submitted to PubMed Central upon acceptance for publication. For an overview of this process, please see the Medical Center Library NIH Public Access Policy Compliance libguide.

Using NIHMS

How to log in

To submit a manuscript to PMC via NIHMS, you will first need to log in to the NIHMS system. NIHMS supports a variety of different login routes in order to authenticate different types of users. If your primary funding organization is NIH, then you should login via your eRA Commons credentials. Additionally, submitters may use the same login credentials that they use for NCBI/My Bibliography, as these systems are connected. For other funding organizations, please see this NIH FAQ. If you are not sure if you have an account or which account you used previously, contact the NIHMS Help Desk. We do recommend that you log in to NIHMS with same method each time as submissions made via one account may not be available via another account. 

Overview of the deposit process

Depositing a manuscript in NIHMS for submission to PMC is a multi-step process that requires an author to approve both the newly deposited files and the converted PMC-ready files. Remember that anyone can submit the manuscript but only the author or PI of the manuscript can serve as the reviewer. Also remember that you will upload the final accepted version of the manuscript, not the published PDF. 

Once you are logged in, click the blue, Submit New Manuscript button, located on the right-hand side of the screen, and follow the guidance provided by the NIHMS wizard. In addition, the NIHMS Tutorials page provides step-by-step tutorials on the NIHMs submission process.

The general process looks like this:

  1. Upload the final, accepted manuscript files (typically a word document, with tables and figures separated) to NIHMS, either through your NCBI "My Bibliography" or through the NIHMS wizard. Be sure to include any supplementary material and figures. You will also assign a reviewer at this stage (this person will receive emails from NIHMS throughout the process).
  2. Associate funding with the article and provide the Initial Approval of the material.
  3. Wait for NIHMS to convert your files to a PubMed Central ready document. This typically takes 2-3 weeks.
  4. Approve the final version of the PubMed Central document. The assigned reviewer will receive ONE email from NIHMS as a notification to do this.
  5. Your article is given a PMCID and is now compliant. 

Need assistance?

If you have questions about using NIHMS or about the NIH Public Access Compliance process in general, reach out to nihpublicaccesscompliance@dm.duke.edu or attend Medical Center Library Office Hours.