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Writing and Publishing

Do I have to submit my manuscript to PubMed Central?

As noted on the NIH public access website, your peer-reviewed papers should be submitted to PubMed Central (PMC) immediately upon acceptance for publication by a journal. PMC will make these papers publicly available within 12 months of publication. The Policy applies to all peer-reviewed papers that you author or co-author as part of your NIH or NIH-funded duties, even if the corresponding author or other authors are not supported by NIH.

There are four methods to ensure that an applicable paper is submitted to PubMed Central (PMC) in compliance with the NIH Public Access Policy. Authors may use whichever method is most appropriate for them and consistent with their publishing agreement. Click on the method in the table below for details.

 Method A
Journal deposits final published articles in PubMed Central without author involvement
Method B
Author asks publisher to deposit specific final published article in PMC
Method C
Author deposits final peer-reviewed manuscript in PMC via the NIHMS
Method D
Author completes submission of final peer-reviewed manuscript deposited by publisher in the NIHMS
Version of Paper SubmittedFinal Published ArticleFinal Published ArticleFinal Peer-Reviewed ManuscriptFinal Peer-Reviewed Manuscript
Task 1: Who starts the deposit process?PublisherPublisherAuthor or designee, via NIHMSPublisher
Task 2: Who approves paper for processing?PublisherPublisherAuthor, via NIHMSAuthor, via NIHMS
Task 3: Who approves paper for Pub Med Central display?PublisherPublisherAuthor, via NIHMSAuthor, via NIHMS
Participating journal/publisherMethod A JournalsMake arrangements with these publishersCheck publishing agreementCheck publishing agreement
Who is Responsible?NIH AwardeeNIH AwardeeNIH AwardeeNIH Awardee
To cite papers, from acceptance for publication to 3 months post publicationPMCID or “PMC Journal- In Process”PMCID or “PMC Journal- In Process”PMCID or NIHMSIDPMCID or NIHMSID
To cite papers, 3 months post publication and beyondPMCIDPMCIDPMCIDPMCID

EndNote Output Styles

The EndNote styles collection contains more than 4,500 bibliographic styles for a variety of disciplines. If you do not see the style you need, check the EndNote website.

If you find the journal style you need, download the file and save to the desktop.

  1. For windows: left click on the Start menu, click Explore, go to Program Files, click on EndNote, click on the Styles folder.
  2. Drag and drop the output style file from your desktop to the folder.

If you cannot find the output style you need from the EndNote website, you can alter an existing style to conform to your needs.

  1. From the Edit menu, choose Output Styles and select Open Style Manager.
  2. In the Style Manager, change the setting in the information panel (on the right- hand side) from Style Info to Style Preview. The preview of the selected style should now be displayed.
  3. Scroll through the list of available styles to see if you can find one that is similar to what you need.
  4. Once you have found a similar style, select it, and click the Edit button. The Style window opens.
  5. Choose Save As from the File menu, give this copy of the style a new name that corresponds to the name of the journal you want to use it for, and click Save. This will also keep the original style unchanged, in the event that you need to use it later.
  6. The new Style window remains open for you to edit as you need.
  7. There are many elements of the style that may be edited. For detailed information on specifics of editing styles refer to the EndNote Manual (via the Help button). As an example, you can edit the citations in the text from superscript numbers "1" to "author-year type". Click on Templates under the Citation heading to see the Citation panel. This template tells EndNote how to format the in-text citations. (The bibliography number corresponds to a numbered reference in a bibliography.) An author-year type of style would display as “(Author, Year)” in the citation template. You may change the template by deleting unwanted field names or punctuation, retyping the punctuation you want, and inserting new fields with the Insert Field button.

EndNote Output Styles

What does it cost to have someone edit my manuscript?

The NIH Library Editing Service provides, as a free service, light and medium editing for NIH- and HHS-related work. The service is intended to help you get your draft ready for peer review. As the writer, you have the option to accept or reject the editing suggestions. In order to serve all eligible staff who request editing assistance, we leave it to you to perform in-depth editing and to make all revisions.

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