PubMed Central (PMC) is a free, full-text archive of biomedical literature managed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Unlike PubMed, which only contains citation information such as title, journal, author, and abstract, all articles in PMC have the full text, available to anyone.

Beginning on July 1, 2025, the NIH requires that all manuscripts accepted for publication in a journal, on or after December 31, 2025, must be submitted to PMC upon acceptance for publication, for public availability without embargo upon the official date of publication.

This can be done in one of three ways:

1. You publish in a journal that is fully archived in PMC;
2. You made open access arrangements with a PMC selective deposit journal or publisher program;
3. You deposit the article yourself through the NIH Manuscript Submission (NIHMS) system 

Each of these options are discussed more in detail below.

For journals that automatically comply with the NIH access policy, check the PMC Journal List for journals with the following statuses:

• Release Delay (Embargo): 0 months (Immediate release)
• Agreement Status: Active

If the journal is in an active agreement and has an embargo of 0 (immediate release) then nothing else is required from the author to be in compliance.

If the agreement status is either "no longer participating", or the embargo status is not 0 (immediate release), then please proceed to option 2.

Even if a journal does not participate in PMC, the publisher may deposit an article directly to PMC without author involvement if open access arrangements were made and one of these additional submission criteria are met:

• The article is published in a MEDLINE-indexed journal; or
• The article acknowledges support of a PMC designated funder or a member of the Europe PMC Funders Group.

A list of Selective Deposit Programs can be found on the Selective Deposit Collections page. It is your responsibility to confirm with your publisher directly that they will use this deposit option for your paper if you make such arrangements.

If neither of the above deposit options apply, you may deposit your author accepted manuscript to one of two manuscript submission systems.

If you received funding from an NIHMS funder (such as the NIH, CDC, EPA, FDA, or the Department of Veterans Affairs) you should use the NIH Manuscript Submission (NIHMS) system.

If you received funding from a Europe PMC funder (such as the World Health Organization) you should use Europe PMC Plus. 

If your work was funded by both an NIHMS funder and a Europe PMC funder, submit to the manuscript system that partners with the funder who has stricter embargo and license requirements. You do not need to submit to both manuscript systems.

However, please remember that publishers are permitted to set their own policies. For instance, a publisher can decide to refuse publication of an article that carries a pre-existing contractual burden such as an immediate deposit requirement, or they impose conditions for doing so, such as an APC being paid by the author. It is the responsibility of the author to pay close attention to publisher policies before submitting.