Many of the scientists who receive research funding from NIH publish the results of this research in journals that are not available in PubMed Central (PMC). In order to improve access to these research articles, NIH's Public Access policy asks these authors to give PMC the final, peer reviewed manuscripts of such articles once they have been accepted for publication.

Get a list of author manuscripts available in PMC.

How does the author manuscript in PMC differ from the article published in the journal?

[Though specific procedures vary from journal to journal, the publication process outlined here is typical for most research articles.]
When an author submits an article to a journal, it is reviewed by one or more independent peer reviewers and the journal's editors, who decide whether to accept it for publication. As part of this process, the author may be asked to revise the article to meet the journal's standards for acceptance. The final manuscript supplied to PMC is the version that the journal accepted for publication, including any revisions that the author made during the peer review process.

The published version of the article usually includes additional changes made by the journal's editorial staff after acceptance of the author's final manuscript. These edits may be limited to matters of style and format or they could include more substantive changes made with the concurrence of the author.

Link between the author manuscript in PMC and the published article.

When PMC displays the author manuscript version of an article, the source data preceding the article title includes a reference to the published article, as in the illustration below.

If the journal participates in NCBI's 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.