Did you know that Elsevier offers a free submittal service on behalf of NIH-funded authors for the NIH Public Access Policy? Authors whose work was generated by NIH-funded research are required to comply with the NIH Public Access Policy by submitting (or have submitted for them) a copy of the peer-reviewed manuscript to PubMed Central upon acceptance of publication with the full text of the manuscript to be made available for viewing within 12 months of publication.

How should authors inform Elsevier of NIH-funded works that need to be submitted?

In the Elsevier copyright agreement form there is a section titled: ”Funding,” with an option: “The underlying research reported in the article was funded by the US National Institutes of Health.” The box for this option needs to be checked in order for Elsevier to submit this work on behalf of NIH-funded authors. There is also a space in the Funding section to enter the name/email of the PI or author designated to be the reviewer of the manuscript. The designated reviewer will receive an email notification from the NIH Manuscript Submission system (NIHMS) when the manuscript has been submitted. If the copyright agreement form does not have a Funding section as described above, contact the journal editor for clarification.

Unless the funding option is checked, Elsevier will not know that the manuscript needs to be submitted. If an author has published in an Elsevier journal and the manuscript has not yet been submitted, contact Elsevier at support@elsevier.com to clarify the status of the submission. Include the full citation information and date of acceptance of publication.

After the manuscript is submitted, the designated PI or author will receive two emails from NIHMS. The first email will ask the designated PI or author to review/approve the submission to verify that the correct manuscript was submitted and to enter/confirm grant award information. At this time a NIHMS ID reference number will be available. The NIHMS ID serves as documentation of compliance with the NIH Policy.

After NIHMS prepares the manuscript for posting on PubMed Central (PMC), a second email will be sent to the designated PI or author for review/approval of the final version. After this is approved and the work posted to PMC, a PubMed Central reference number (PMCID) is assigned. The PMCID replaces the NIHMS ID and should be used for documentation of compliance with the NIH Policy.