About PMC
 Overview
 FAQs
 Back Issue Digitization
 Open Access Publishing
 Copyright Notice
 Info For Publishers
 Advisory Committee

Digitizing Back Issues of Journals

In an effort to create a complete digital archive of the journals that are in PubMed Central (PMC), NLM is scanning the back issues of PMC journals that are not already available in electronic form. The complete contents of the scanned issues will be available free in PMC. The details:
  • NLM is scanning back to the first issue of each journal, provided that a disposable printed copy of each issue can be found for this purpose. The printed copy’s binding is destroyed during the scanning process, and in most cases the source copy is discarded after being scanned.

  • Each issue is scanned cover to cover, with pages scanned at resolutions ranging from 300 dpi to 600 dpi, depending on the nature of the source material. A PDF file is created for every article or other discrete item in an issue. Grayscale and color graphics in an article are reproduced in the PDF file as true representations of the original pages.

  • OCR text, of sufficient quality to build indexes for full text searching and to use for other background processing, is generated automatically from the scanned images. There is no manual correction of the OCR text to improve its accuracy, and PMC users will not have direct access to the OCR text.

  • An XML record is created for the citation and abstract of any scanned article that is not already listed in NLM’s bibliographic citation database, PubMed/MEDLINE, and these citations are added to PubMed.

  • The full cost of scanning the back issues and creating the related OCR and XML files is covered by NLM and, in some cases, the Wellcome Trust and the U.K. Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC). See the announcement of the collaboration between NLM, the Wellcome Trust and JISC.

  • A journal is expected to provide NLM a disposable copy of its print issues to be used for scanning. NLM, in turn, provides the journal with a complete electronic copy of its material, at no cost. The journal may redistribute and reuse these files for its own purposes, in any way it chooses.

  • A participating journal gives NLM permanent rights to archive the scanned material and make it freely available to the public through PMC, subject to normal ‘fair use’ provisions of copyright law. As with existing content in PMC, copyright for the scanned material remains with the publisher or with individual authors, as applicable.

Participating Journals

    BMJ Publishing Group Journals
    BMJ: British Medical Journal
    Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases
    Archives of Disease in Childhood
    The British Journal of Ophthalmology
    British Journal of Sports Medicine
    Genitourinary Medicine
    Gut
    Heart
    Injury Prevention
    Journal of Accident & Emergency Medicine
    Journal of Clinical Pathology
    Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health
    Journal of Medical Ethics
    Journal of Medical Genetics
    Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry
    Molecular Pathology
    Occupational & Environmental Medicine
    Quality in Health Care
    Thorax
    Tobacco Control
    Western Journal of Medicine

If a journal was published under a different title earlier in its existence, the earlier version will also be scanned in most cases, unless the current publisher does not have rights to the earlier issues.


Write to PMC    PMC Home    PubMed    NCBI    NLM    NIH

Privacy Policy    Disclaimer    Freedom of Information Act

Last updated: January 16, 2004