Tag Archives: PMC

Updated PubMed Central (PMC) Website

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In October 2024, the National Library of Medicine (NLM) updated the PubMed Central (PMC) website. Apart from the most obvious change – the URL of the PMC homepage is now pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov – most of these important modernization updates are related to the digital accessibility of the PMC website and designed to ensure its reliability and sustainability into the future.

More specifically, from PubMed Central (PMC) Transitions to Updated Website – NCBI Insights:

“The updated website runs on cloud services to ensure the website’s long-term sustainability and reliability. It also incorporates U.S. Web Design System (USWDS) components and design principles to improve PMC’s readability and accessibility, whether you are visiting on a desktop computer, mobile device, or accessing its content using assistive technology.” 

For example, the PMC article display has been tweaked to improve its readability:

See this section of the PMC User Guide to learn more about the key features and functionality available both on the desktop version and mobile version article displays.

To read about the great work NLM is doing to ensure equitable access to its products – see:
The Future of PubMed Central: Publicly Accessible, Digitally Equitable, Universally Valuable – NLM Musings from the Mezzanine

Questions?  Ask Us at the MSK Library!

Systematic Bulk Downloading of Articles from PubMed Central (PMC)

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In this era of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), there is increased interest in accessing large numbers of full-text articles to train deep learning models and/or evaluate their performance. The U. S. National Library of Medicine (NLM)’s PubMed Central (PMC) full-text article repository is a popular choice with AI/ML researchers who are often looking for a free, openly accessible source of the scholarly biomedical literature. For a recent example of research carried out using the PMC Open Access Subset, see PMID: 37094464:

Although the NLM is generally accommodating of researchers using and even building upon all the tools and resources that it develops and supports, there is an expectation on the part of NLM that researchers will work within their rules and restrictions. Anyone interested in “automated retrieval of articles in machine-readable formats in PubMed Central (PMC)” is encouraged to explore the “several large datasets of journal articles and other scientific publications made available for retrieval under license terms that generally allow for more liberal redistribution and reuse than a traditional copyrighted work (e.g., Creative Commons licenses)”. However, there are “Restrictions on the Systematic Downloading of Articles”– see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/tools/textmining/. 

When researchers try to bulk download a large amount of content via the regular PMC web interface on their own, PMC’s systems notice the increased activity and block the IP range(s) responsible as this is in violation of the terms of the PMC Copyright Notice which states that “Systematic downloading of batches of articles from the main PMC web site, in any way, is prohibited because of copyright restrictions.”

From: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/about/copyright/:

PMC makes certain subsets of articles (i.e., the PMC Article Datasets) accessible through auxiliary services that may be used for automated retrieval and downloading. These are:

These services are the only services that may be used for this purpose. Do not use any other automated processes for downloading articles, even if you are only retrieving articles from the PMC Article Datasets (including the PMC Open Access Subset).

Questions? Be sure to Ask Us at the MSK Library!

Springer Nature No Longer Providing Manuscript Deposition Service

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Effective immediately, Springer Nature has decided to no longer offer a full manuscript deposition service to their NIH-funded authors. Authors (usually the corresponding author) or their assigned delegate, will now be responsible for handling the task of depositing the accepted manuscript in the NIH Manuscript Submission (NIHMS) system to fulfill any funder or institutional mandate. Instructions for this task can be found on the Memorial Sloan Kettering NIH Public Access Policy LibGuide. Look for the tab labelled, Submission Method C.

Springer Nature will continue to automatically deposit gold open access (OA) articles in PMC (PubMed Central) and EPMC (Europe PubMed Central) if the research paper meets the PMC deposition guidelines on publisher deposition of papers published open access. Authors can confirm if a journal has a full PMC deposition agreement by searching for the journal title here.

It is critical that authors provide details of the grant when submitting their manuscript for publication to enable Springer Nature to identify eligible OA NIH-funded articles for deposit in the NIHMS system.

Should you have any questions or concerns, don’t hesitate to reach out to Donna Gibson, Director, Library Services.