Submitting The Paper: A Glossary

• Allowable Costs -  Publishing costs which may be included in an NIH grant budget and paid for with NIH funds. Some highlights of the NIH guidance on allowable publishing costs are:
  • NIH recognizes that some peer-reviewed publishing routes may result in publication costs, including, but not limited to, article processing charges (APCs).
  • Journal or publisher fees that arise during the course of the publication process for the sole purpose of submitting the Author Accepted Manuscript to PubMed Central are not allowable costs.
  • As stated in Section 7.2 of the NIH Grants Policy Statement (GPS), a cost may be considered reasonable if the nature of the goods or services acquired or applied and the associated dollar amount reflect the action that a prudent person would have taken under the circumstances prevailing when the decision to incur the cost was made.
  • Costs for services incurred after closeout of the award, even for an Author Accepted Manuscript subject to the NIH Public Access Policy, are unallowable because the costs of publications must be incurred before closeout.
  • Source: Supplemental Guidance to the 2024 NIH Public Access Policy: Publication Costs

• Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) - The author’s final manuscript version that has been accepted for journal publication and includes all revisions resulting from the peer review process, including all associated tables, graphics, and supplemental material.
  • Also known as: Accepted Manuscript; Author’s Manuscript; Final Peer-Reviewed Manuscript; Peer-Reviewed Accepted Manuscript; Postprint
  • Source: 2024 NIH Public Access Policy

• Embargo - The time period, typically in months, that the publisher retains rights to exclusive distribution of the article. Upon submission to PMC (PubMed Central) and until the embargo period passes, PMC will display a brief citation record for the manuscript, but the full text article will not be made publicly available until the embargo period passes.
  • Source: NIHMS Glossary

• Final Peer-Reviewed Manuscript - See Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) above.

• Final Published Article - The journal's authoritative copy, including journal or publisher copyediting and stylistic edits, and formatting changes, even prior to the compilation of a volume or issue or the assignment of associated metadata.
  • Also known as: Version of Record (VoR)
  • Source: 2024 NIH Public Access Policy

• Government Use License - The use rights NIH-funded authors are required to grant to the NIH as part of the terms of accepting federal funding: “I hereby grant to NIH, a royalty-free, nonexclusive, and irrevocable right to reproduce, publish, or otherwise use this work for Federal purposes and to authorize others to do so. This grant of rights includes the right to make the final, peer-reviewed manuscript publicly available in PubMed Central upon the Official Date of Publication.
  • Source: Supplemental Guidance to the 2024 NIH Public Access Policy: Government Use License and Rights

• Journal -  A periodical publication that is either 1) included in the “journal” section of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) Catalog or 2) meets all of the following criteria:
  • Requirements for ISSN assignment;
  • Content is issued over time under a common title;
  • Is a collection of articles by different authors; AND
  • Is intended to be published indefinitely.
  • Source: 2024 NIH Public Access Policy

• NIHMS - NIH Manuscript Submission system. NIHMS facilitates the submission process of peer-reviewed, accepted manuscripts for inclusion in PubMed Central (PMC) in compliance with the NIH or participating funder's public access policy. Complete files undergo a conversion process before being sent to PMC.
  • Source: NIHMS Glossary

• NIHMSID - he NIHMSID is a preliminary article identifier that applies only to manuscripts deposited through the NIHMS system.
  • Source: NIHMS Glossary

• Official Date of Publication -  The date on which the Final Published Article is first made available in final, edited form, whether in print or electronic (i.e., online) format.
  • With the 2024 NIH Public Access Policy, the Official Date of Publication definition has been updated to be independent of the publication's format.
  • Source: 2024 NIH Public Access Policy

• PubMed - PubMed is a citation and abstract database for biomedical literature, life science journals, and online books. Citations may include links to full-text content from PubMed Central and publisher websites. For more information, see PubMed.gov.
  • Source: NIHMS Glossary

• PMID  - Each citation record in PubMed is assigned a unique identification number. A PMID is not the same as a PMCID (see below) and cannot be used to demonstrate compliance with the NIH or another participating funder's public access policy.
  • Source: NIHMS Glossary

• PubMed Central (PMC) - PMC is the National Library of Medicine's full-text archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature, which gives the public access to papers at no cost. Papers collected under the NIH or participating funder's public access policy are archived in PMC. More information about PubMed Central is available on the PMC website.
  • Source: NIHMS Glossary

• PMCID  - PubMed Central Identification. Each paper in PMC is assigned an unique identification number. The PMCID is also used by recipients of NIH funding to demonstrate compliance with the NIH Public Access policy when citing their publications.
  • Source: NIHMS Glossary

• Reviewer  - The Reviewer on an NIHMS record is responsible for approving the initial deposit, signing off on the Submission Statement, and ensuring the PMC-ready documents are accurate and complete before approving them for release in PMC. The Reviewer is usually an author on the paper. If an author is not available to complete the approval steps, a PI can serve this role. Please note that although a Submitter can also serve as the Reviewer if he or she is an author or a PI, a third party cannot approve an NIHMS manuscript for conversion or inclusion in PMC. An NIHMS record can have only one Reviewer. If the current Reviewer is unresponsive or cannot complete the required steps, another author or PI will need to be assigned to the role in order for the submission to progress.
  • Source: NIHMS Glossary

• Submitted Manuscript -  The version of an article that is submitted to a journal for publication, which has not yet undergone peer review.
  • Also known as: Preprint; Submitted Version
  • Source: Supplemental Guidance to the 2024 NIH Public Access Policy: Government Use License and Rights