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Information for Publishers
This page describes the process for adding a journal to PubMed Central and explains what is required of participating journals. Interested publishers should also read the PubMed Central FAQs and the Deposit and Access Policies.

Start-Up Process and Requirements for New PubMed Central Journals

Journal Qualification

Participation in PubMed Central (PMC) is voluntary and open to any life sciences journal that either is covered by one of the major abstracting and indexing services such as MEDLINE, Agricola, Biosis, Chemical Abstracts, EMBASE, PsycINFO or Science Citation Index, or (if a new journal) has at least three members on its editorial board who currently are principal investigators on research grants from major funding agencies (such as NIH) in the U.S. or abroad.

For a journal that is not yet covered by any of the major indexing services, PMC needs brief letters from three editors who are listed on the journal masthead and who meet the PubMed Central requirement of being a principal investigator on a research grant from a major funding agency.

Each letter should describe the writer's editorial role on the journal, and list his or her current research grants from internationally recognized funding agencies. Grant descriptions must include grant number, grant title, amount, duration, and funding agency name. If a funding agency's name does not clearly identify it as a national scientific agency, please include a sentence about the agency's function. The letters may be sent via email to pmc@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, or via regular mail to:
    PubMed Central
    National Center for Biotechnology Information
    National Library of Medicine
    NIH Building 45, Room 5AN12
    45 Center Drive, MSC 6510
    Bethesda, Maryland 20892-6510

Journal Contacts

Please send the following journal registration information to PMC at one of the addresses above:
  • Journal title and ISSN
  • Publisher name and address
  • Publisher contact – name, email address, and phone number of someone who will work with PMC on policy, content, presentation style and similar matters.
  • Vendor contact – name, email address, and phone number of the person responsible for sending journal data files to PMC, if a vendor will be doing that on behalf of the journal.

Required Data Formats

A journal must supply the full text of articles to PubMed Central in an SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language) or XML (eXtensible Markup Language) format which conforms to any established DTD (Document Type Definition) for journal articles. Figures should be supplied as high-resolution (TIFF or Encapsulated PostScript) images. A PDF may be submitted in addition to the SGML/XML version of an article, but not as the primary (or only) electronic form of the article. Supplementary material in the form of video, audio or data files may also be submitted. PMC does not accept HTML data.

NLM has a Journal Publishing XML DTD which any journal may use to submit its data. PMC will also accept data in other DTDs including, but not limited to, BMC, Keton, OUP, and Ovid.

Journal Setup

The basic steps for adding a journal to PMC are:
  • PMC reviews a sample of data from the journal to ensure that it meets certain standards for accuracy and completeness.
  • The journal corrects any problems in its source data which would cause the content of an article to be presented inaccurately.
  • PMC and the journal agree on a presentation style for the journal in PubMed Central.
  • The journal supplies PMC complete data for all back issues to be included in PubMed Central, and PMC loads these into the database.
  • PMC and the journal review the presentation of these issues on a PubMed Central test site.
  • The publisher and PMC sign a PubMed Central participation agreement.
  • The journal is added to the PMC live site. New issues of the journal are added to the database according to the schedule agreed to in the PubMed Central participation agreement.

Evaluation of Sample Data

The purpose of evaluating sample data is to ensure that a publisher can routinely supply journal data of sufficient quality to generate complete and accurate articles online, without the need for human action to correct errors or omissions in the data.

PMC normally requires a minimum sample of three issues or 50 articles for evaluation. The sample set should include the complete data for at least one issue from each publication year that a journal intends to deposit into PubMed Central. In other words, the journal should provide one issue from the current year (or the most recent year being made available to PubMed Central) and one issue from each of the preceding years. If a journal expects to start with less than three years worth of issues, it should provide three sample issues from the available range of issues. If the minimum number of issues defined above comprises less than 50 articles, PMC will require additional issues to make up the 50 article minimum.

If a journal is brand new and has published fewer than three issues or 50 articles, PMC still needs to have a reasonable sample, something in the vicinity of 10 articles.

The sample set should include:
  • A copy of the applicable DTD, with documentation
  • SGML/XML for each article or other published item. (It is assumed that there will be a separate SGML/XML file for each article.)
  • High-resolution image files for all figures, as well as for tables, schemes and equations that are not encoded in the SGML/XML
  • A PDF, if available, for each article. (A PDF should be provided even if it will not be included in the PMC archive. It is used to check the accuracy of the PMC online article during the evaluation process.)
  • Any supplemental data files that might be included in PubMed Central.
 Download the PMC File Specifications (a Microsoft Word document) for details about required data elements, file formats, and file naming and organization.

Every publisher will be given a private FTP account at NCBI for sending data to PMC. Large volume data, such as high-resolution image files, may be submitted on tape or CD.

PMC checks the sample data to ensure that:
  • all required files (SGML/XML data, high-resolution images, and PDFs and supplemental data, if applicable) have been included
  • the SGML/XML parses correctly according to the DTD
  • all files are correctly named
  • when the SGML/XML and associated images are rendered as an online article, the content of each article is accurate and complete.
This last check is made against the print or PDF version of an article or, in cases where content is only available online, against the copy of the article at the journal's own site.

At the end of this review, PMC will inform the publisher of any errors in the supplied data which inhibit the accurate reproduction of the content of an article. The publisher will be expected to correct these errors and repeat the evaluation cycle before proceeding to the next step.

Journal Presentation Style

The PubMed Central online presentation style allows a journal to maintain a distinct identity, at the same time as it provides a certain consistency of appearance and functionality across all of PubMed Central for the benefit of users.

The journal identity is set by the journal logo at the top of each page and a journal 'watermark' stripe running the length of each page. The journal logo is also used to provide a link (or links) back to the journal's own site.

A journal may choose from a number of styles, within the general PMC template, for presenting elements such as references, section headings and certain parts of the article front matter. If a journal has formatting needs which materially affect readability of content and can not be met by the available options, the PMC template will be expanded to include the new formats.

Loading and Review of All Back Issues

As soon as PMC completes its review of the sample data, the journal should begin sending PMC the data for all the back issues that it intends to deposit in PubMed Central initially. The back issues will be loaded into the PMC database and will be presented on a PubMed Central test site in the style selected by the journal. At this point, the publisher will be able to do a thorough review of the journal as presented in PMC. The journal will not go live in PubMed Central until both the publisher and PMC are satisfied with its quality in PMC.

PMC Participation Agreement

Before a journal is publicly released in PMC, the publisher must complete a formal PubMed Central Participation Agreement with NLM.

 Download the standard PubMed Central Participation Agreement in Microsoft Word format.