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NIH Public Access Policy: Non-Compliance Reports

The NIH Public Access Policy ensures that the public has access to the published results of NIH funded research.

Non Compliant Citations

Submitting an NIH award progress report (or Research Performance Progress Report (RPPR)) that cites publications failing to comply with the agency’s public access requirement can delay or prevent the release of funding. Immediately after submission, a non-compliance notice is sent to the PI’s email. The notice freezes the RPPR process.

The PI must bring each publication into compliance and provide proof to the NIH. Failure to do so could lead to the award being canceled.

 Determine each non-compliant article’s submission status

To determine an article’s submission status,  check the citation in NCBI My Bibliography.  Articles without an NIHMSID number in the Public Access Compliance field of the citation may not have been submitted.

Check the NIHMS system (https://www.nihms.nih.gov) to see if and where the paper is in the submission process. 

If an article has not been submitted, either the PI or the author needs to see that the article gets submitted. In some cases, the journal publisher takes care of this process. Check here: https://sharing.nih.gov/public-access-policy/determine-submission-methods and if the journal in question appears on the list of journals that handle the submission process, contact them immediately. 

Once an article has been submitted to the NIHMS and received two approvals from a designated reviewer, it is uploaded into PubMed Central and receives a PMCID. The NIHMS submission process takes roughly 4-6 weeks. Articles already cited in the PI’s My Bibliography and linked with an award will automatically change to compliant when a PMCID is issued.

Generating a Compliance Report

Generate a PDF Report

Once all articles linked to a specific award are compliant on the PI’s My Bibliography a PDF report can be generated.

Here’s how to create a PDF Report:

    1.  Log into your My NCBI My Bibliography
    2.  Click on Filter citations and select an award > Click on the Awards Filter > You should only see those citations linked to the award selected
    3.  Click the radial at the top of the list selecting all articles
    4.  Click on Manage citations then the Compliance Report (PDF) link
    5.  A pop-up box will ask you to enter the PI’s name and starting page number, if necessary. Click on the Download PDF button to generate the report.
    6. Submit the report to NIH (method of submission is usually indicated in the email notifying PI of noncompliance).