PMC COVID-19 Collection FAQ
- What publishers contributed to the PMC COVID-19 Collection?
- What was the scope of content accepted under the PMC COVID-19 Collection?
- How was the deposit process for the PMC COVID-19 Collection different from standard PMC operations?
- Will PMC continue to provide perpetual access to the deposited articles?
- Where can I find a list of articles removed from PMC or the PMC OA Subset at the end of the Public Health Emergency?
- Why are some articles from the PMC COVID-19 Collection not discoverable in PubMed?
What publishers contributed to the PMC COVID-19 Collection?
A list of collaborators and links to available publisher resources is available on the main PMC COVID-19 Collection page. See the related FAQ item "Will PMC continue to provide perpetual access to the deposited articles?"
What was the scope of content accepted under the PMC COVID-19 Collection?
The PMC COVID-19 Collection primarily includes peer-reviewed articles discussing COVID-19 or the SARS-CoV-2 virus from journals across the spectrum of research disciplines. Additionally, journal articles on previous coronaviruses (e.g., including Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS)) were deposited by select publishers. It was left to the discretion of the collaborating publishers and scholarly societies to determine which articles to deposit in PMC.
Preprints made public prior to peer review and journal publication were not in scope for the PMC COVID-19 Collection; however, preprints reporting NIH-supported COVID-19 research have been added to PMC and PubMed under the NIH Preprint Pilot.
How was the deposit process for the PMC COVID-19 Collection different from standard PMC operations?
Working within the established PMC infrastructure, NLM adapted its standard requirements for the deposit of individual articles and online-first articles to the PMC COVID-19 Collection to provide greater flexibility and ensure coronavirus research was available as quickly as possible. In addition, PDF-only deposits were accepted in cases where the article PDF was published online prior to other formats being available.
NLM also engaged with publishers and journals that did not have formal agreements to deposit content in PMC (see the “Agreements” section of the PMC Policies page). To participate, a publisher had to have journals in scope and eligible for inclusion the NLM Collection.
To allow for this greater flexibility, new selective deposit channels were established for individual publishers to deposit COVID-19 related articles. NLM is leaving these deposit channels open through the end of 2023 before transitioning this work to standard PMC deposit channels and rules.
Will PMC continue to provide perpetual access to the deposited articles?
As an archive, PMC will continue to provide perpetual access to all articles deposited in the PMC COVID-19 Collection for which the copyright holder provides such permission.
The table below indicates if the current license terms provided by the publisher allow for permanent access to articles in PMC and/or continued distribution for re-use through the PMC Open Access Subset.
Any content removals apply only to those articles that were available under custom license terms. See also the related FAQ item “Where can I find a list of articles removed from PMC or the PMC Open Access Subset at the end of the Public Health Emergency?”
| Publisher | Available in | |
|---|---|---|
| PMC | PMC OA Subset | |
| American Association for Cancer Research | Yes | No |
| American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS) | Yes | Yes |
| American Chemical Society | No | No |
| American Institute of Physics | Yes | Yes |
| American Journal of Tropical Medicine & Hygiene | Yes | Yes |
| American Medical Informatics Association | Yes | Yes |
| American Physical Society | Yes | Yes |
| American Physiological Society | Yes | No |
| American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology | Yes | Yes |
| American Society of Hematology | Yes | Yes |
| American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) | Yes | Yes |
| American Society for Microbiology | Yes | Yes |
| American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene | Yes | Yes |
| American Thoracic Society | Yes | Yes |
| Annals of Internal Medicine, a publication of the American College of Physicians | Yes | No |
| AOSIS | Yes | Yes |
| British Institute of Radiology | Yes | Yes |
| The British Medical Journal (BMJ) | No | No |
| Bulletin of the World Health Organization | Yes | Yes |
| Cambridge University Press (CUP) | Yes | No |
| Cell Press | Yes | Yes |
| Chinese Journal of Lung Cancer | Yes | Yes |
| CSIRO Publishing | Yes | Yes |
| De Gruyter | Yes | Yes |
| eLife | Yes | Yes |
| Elsevier | Yes | Yes |
| EMBO Press | Yes | No |
| Emerald Publishing | Yes | No |
| European Respiratory Society | Yes | Yes |
| F1000 Research Limited | Yes | Yes |
| Frontiers | Yes | Yes |
| Future Science Group | Yes | Yes |
| Healthcare Infection Society | Yes | Yes |
| IEEE | Yes | Yes |
| IOP Publishing | Yes | Yes |
| JMIR Publications | Yes | Yes |
| Karger Publishers | Yes | No |
| The Lancet | Yes | Yes |
| Life Science Alliance | Yes | Yes |
| Microbiology Society | Yes | Yes |
| New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) | Yes | Yes |
| Oxford University Press | Yes | No |
| Partners in Digital Health | Yes | Yes |
| PLOS | Yes | Yes |
| PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA | Yes | Yes |
| Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) | Yes | Yes |
| Rockefeller University Press (RUP) | Yes | Yes |
| SAGE Publishing | Yes | No |
| Science Journals | Yes | Yes |
| Society of Nuclear Medicine | Yes | Yes |
| Springer Nature | Yes | Yes |
| Taylor & Francis | Yes | No |
| The Royal Society | Yes | Yes |
| Thieme Medical Publishers | Yes | No |
| University of Toronto Press | Yes | Yes |
| Wiley | Yes | No |
| Wolters Kluwer | Yes | No |
Where can I find a list of articles removed from PMC or the PMC Open Access Subset at the end of the Public Health Emergency?
Some of the articles in the PMC COVID-19 Collection were deposited under license terms that expired at the end of the COVID-19 public health emergency declaration, and were, therefore, removed. The downloadable lists below (in CSV format) provide the PMCID and DOI of all articles removed:
- Download a list of articles removed from the PMC archive. (File last updated: August 29, 2023)
- Download a list of articles removed from distribution through the PMC Open Access Subset. (File last updated: September 21, 2023)
Why are some articles from the PMC COVID-19 Collection not discoverable in PubMed?
Eligible publishers were able to deposit articles in PMC from journals not in the NLM Collection, and thus not in the NLM Catalog. As PubMed indexing requires the presence of an NLM Catalog record, some article records are only searchable in PMC. More than 80% of the articles in the PMC COVID-19 Collection have a corresponding citation in PubMed.
See also the related FAQ item, "How was the deposit process for the PMC COVID-19 Collection different from standard PMC operations?".