Addendum to the PMC File Submission Specifications: Special Cases

The following is an extension of the PMC File Submission Specifications. This Addendum focuses on submission of articles with special requirements related to the times of their release in PMC, and licenses to reuse the articles. The general instructions are followed by specific tagging details.

Tagging for articles in the same journal with different release delays:

Specify the release delay at the article level with a processing instruction (See Tagging Details below). Articles without a release delay explicitly tagged in the article will be released based on the default embargo set by the publisher’s agreement with PMC for that journal.

Tagging a single article with multiple release requirements based on differing author obligations:

Provide the earliest applicable release date in the XML file. If PMC receives a single article file with more than one release date specified, release will occur on the earliest date.

Tagging Open Access articles with license statements:

Include an Open Access indicator and a summary license statement in the XML file for each article designated as Open Access by the publisher (See Tagging Details below). The license statement in the XML may also include a link to the publisher’s site for further elaboration of terms and condition of use.

Include a similar license statement in the PDF of every Open Access article. PMC does not require a publisher to add a license statement to existing PDFs if they do not already have one. Note, however, that the license statement helps protect the publisher’s rights because the OA articles are freely available to everyone from PMC’s FTP site.

File packaging for a set of articles or a complete issue from one journal with differing release delays and/or access conditions:

There is no need to separate articles from a single journal or issue into individual deliveries based on differences in release or access conditions. Tagging of this information is at the article level, not the delivery level.

Tagging of grant information:

Explicit tagging of grant information is not required by PMC but may be supplied at the direction of the publisher.

PMC Handling of articles with no specified released dates:

The default date for release of article files received with no release date tagging is the embargo specified by the publisher’s agreement with PMC for the specific journal.

Tagging Details

Release Delay Processing Instruction:

Use the Processing Instruction “release-delay” to define the embargo period for each article.

In XML, it is written as <?release-delay x|y?>
In SGML, it is written as <?release-delay x|y>

where x is the number of months delay, and y is the number of days.

For example:

<?release-delay 6|0?> is a delay of 6 months
<?release-delay 0|14?>  is a delay of 2 weeks
<?release-delay 12|0?>  is a delay of 1 year
<?release-delay 0|0?> is no delay
  1. We prefer that the processing instruction be a child of the root element at the beginning of the article, but some find it easier to tag the PI within the block of text that holds the funding information. This is acceptable.
  2. There should be only one “release-delay” processing instruction in each article. If there is more than one supplied, the smallest one will be used to set the Live in PMC date.
  3. Both a "month" and "day" value should be included in each PI. Use "0" for "0".
  4. Do not use a value for “day” greater than 30. For example, use <?release-delay 12|0?> for a year rather than <?release-delay 0|365?>
  5. “Day” and “month” values can be mixed. For a delay of 3 months and 2 weeks,
    use <?releasedelay 3|14?>

Open Access Indicator:

Any article that is to be Open Access must indicate that explicitly in the source SGML or XML file. For content that is supplied in the NLM Journal Publishing DTD, set the license-type attribute on <license> to “open-access” as in the example of “License Information” below. Any content that is submitted to PMC with <license license-type="open-access"> will be treated as an Open Access article as defined in the Publisher’s PMC Participation agreement.

For content supplied in a DTD other than the NLM DTD, include an indicator of Open Access status based on what is allowed by the DTD. Contact pmc@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov to ensure that the coding will be sufficient to uniquely and unambiguously identify Open Access content for PMC’s purposes.

License Information:

License information must be tagged explicitly in any Open Access article sent to PMC. Details on how to tag license information for PMC in the NLM Journal Publishing DTD are included in the PMC Tagging Guidelines: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/pmcdoc/tagging-guidelines/article/style.html#license

If you submit your content to PMC in an SGML or XML format other than the NLM Journal Publishing DTD, the guidelines are:

  1. Include a precise summary license statement in the source SGML or XML file.
  2. If you are referring to any standard license – such as a Creative Commons license – there should be a URI included for an unambiguous reference.

Here is an example from the PMC Tagging Guidelines for content supplied in the NLM Journal Publishing DTD:

<license license-type="open-access" xlink:href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/">

<p>This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.</p>

</license>