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PMC and Research Funder Policies

PubMed Central (PMC) was established in 2000 as the National Library of Medicine’s (NLM) full-text repository of life sciences journal literature. Since 2005, PMC has been the designated repository for papers submitted in accordance with the NIH Public Access Policy. Today, PMC is the full-text repository for papers that fall under the public and open access policies of a number of research funding organizations that support biomedical and life science research. NLM has also partnered with U.S. Federal agencies that fund research in other scientific disciplines to provide a cost-effective government solution for their public access policies.

These partnerships support NLM’s mission of enabling biomedical research; supporting health care and public health; and promoting healthy behavior through the acquisition, organization, and preservation of the world's scholarly biomedical literature. Additionally, these efforts support and catalyze NLM’s commitment to open science policies and practices. In bringing together the research outputs of many funding organizations and scientific disciplines in a central archive, NLM seeks to improve discovery of, provide consistent access to, and ensure long-term preservation of the scientific record.

NLM will consider partnering with funding organizations to leverage the PMC repository infrastructure when the following conditions are met:

To become a partner, a funder must sign a partnership agreement with NLM outlining the responsibilities of the NLM and the partner organization or make arrangements with an existing NLM partner (i.e., Europe PMC, HRA Open). In general, partners may leverage the PMC infrastructure but remain responsible for the maintenance and enforcement of their individual policies.

NLM may also consider extending manuscript submission and repository support to other NIH initiatives that have specific public access requirements. General inquiries about PMC and research funder policies can be sent to pubmedcentral@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.

Partner Organizations

The following U.S government agencies and private funders have partnerships with NLM to leverage the PMC infrastructure. For specific information on how to comply with the policies of these funders, please see their websites. (The overview of How Papers Get Into PMC may also be of interest.) Any questions about an organization’s policy and requirements should be directed to the funder.

U.S. Federal Agency Partners

Private and International Partners

PMC Funder Deposit List

The PMC Funder Deposit List is available to help publishers, funders, and institutions identify the funded content that can be deposited in PMC. This downloadable list includes the Crossref Funder Registry identifier and available submission routes for partner US Federal Agencies (and their components), Europe PMC Funders, US-based non-governmental organizations, and other international organizations that are in scope for PMC.

Download PMC Funder Deposit List

(File last updated: January 31, 2023)

Other Arrangements

Based on past arrangements with certain national research organizations, PMC will also accept submissions under a PMC selective deposit agreement when one of the following funders is clearly indicated in the metadata deposited with the article:

Additionally, other funding organizations may reference PMC (or Europe PMC) as a repository available to authors for complying with an open access policy without formally partnering with NLM. In such cases, PMC will accept direct submission of all articles supported by these organizations that are published in MEDLINE journals under a selective deposit arrangement.

Funder-Sponsored Journals

If a partner funding organization sponsors a journal to publish their funded research, NLM will recognize the funding organization as the journal owner (regardless of publication platform) and expects the funder to take responsibility for the scientific and editorial quality of the journal and ensure that it meets NLM’s standards for PMC.

Applications from funder-sponsored journals will not be considered prior to the journal meeting PMC’s Pre-Application requirements, as NLM requires a journal to demonstrate a level of sustainability and quality before it is eligible to be added to the archive. In the interim, author manuscripts that fall under the policies of partner organizations may be deposited via the NIH Manuscript Submission system or Europe PMC Plus, as appropriate. Upon acceptance, the PMC participation agreement for the journal will be signed by the funding organization.

Last modified: Tue Jan. 30 2024