[Editor's note: Examples shown in figures are illustrative and may not be in PubMed or PubMed Central exactly as shown.]

n February 2005, NIH announced a new policy designed to improve access to published articles resulting from NIH-funded research. As noted in the press release, "Beginning May 2, 2005, the policy requests that NIH-funded scientists submit an electronic version of the author's final manuscript, upon acceptance for publication, resulting from research supported in whole or in part by NIH. The author's final manuscript is defined as the final version accepted for journal publication, and includes all modifications from the publishing peer review process."

The first of these author manuscripts became available in PubMed Central (PMC) on July 1. A current list is available. Because the policy calls for a voluntary deposit of manuscripts, every eligible article will not necessarily be available through PMC. You are also unlikely to find manuscripts of articles published in journals that are regular PMC participants (e.g., Journal of Clinical Investigation) because the final published article is already in PMC in these cases.

An author manuscript will be released in PMC only after the journal has published the final version of that article and a citation for the published article has been added to PubMed. An author may further delay the release of a manuscript in PMC for up to 12 months after publication.

An author manuscript page in PMC has a distinctive page banner and watermark (the vertical stripe running down the left side of the page). The article source data preceding the title includes a reference to the published article (see Figure 1). If the journal participates in the Entrez LinkOut service (as is frequently the case) the reference to the published article also provides a direct link to the full text of the article at the journal site. The link to the published article is repeated following the author affiliations.

 

When a manuscript is released in PMC, a link will be created from the published article citation in PubMed to the full text of the manuscript in PMC. (PubMed will not have a separate citation for the manuscript.) The nature of the PubMed link will depend on whether or not the published article is freely available to all users at the publisher's site via LinkOut.

If the published article is freely available at the publisher's site, but not deposited in PMC, the following links to the manuscript will be available in PubMed:

• "Free in PMC" on the Links menu that appears to the right of the citation.
• "Author Manuscript" on the LinkOut display for the citation (see Figure 2).

 

If the published article is not free at the publisher's site, a   icon will appear on the PubMed Abstract display, in addition to the links mentioned above (see Figure 3).

 

By Ed Sequeira
National Center for Biotechnology Information

Sequeira E. PubMed^® Links to Author Manuscripts in PubMed Central^®. NLM Tech Bull. 2005 Jul-Aug;(345):e3.