Publications guidance for Sector 7

1. Acknowledge the facility

The required wording for BioSAXS (ID7A1) and FlexX (ID7B2) is maintained on the CHESS acknowledgments page. Use the text there instead of copying from an older paper as award numbers can change from cycle to cycle.

2. Make the paper publicly accessible

Any peer-reviewed paper that results from NIH-supported research must be made available through PubMed Central. Because MacCHESS is an NIH-funded resource, papers reporting work done here fall under this policy whether or not you hold NIH funding of your own.

Under the 2024 NIH Public Access Policy, in effect for manuscripts accepted on or after July 1, 2025, the accepted manuscript must be deposited on acceptance and becomes publicly available on the publication date with no embargo. The older policy that allowed a twelve month delay no longer applies.

What you need to end up with is a PMCID. This is not the same as a PMID. A PMID identifies a PubMed citation and says nothing about public access. A PMCID is the number that demonstrates compliance. An NIHMS ID is a preliminary number issued when a manuscript is deposited, and it stands in for a PMCID for up to three months after publication only.

How to get a PMCID:

First, check whether your journal deposits for you. Many journals deposit the final published article in PMC automatically. Look up the journal in the PMC journal list and confirm that its deposit agreement is active and its release delay is zero months. If so, you don't need to do anything beyond publishing.

If the journal does not deposit for you, deposit the accepted manuscript yourself through the NIH Manuscript Submission system (NIHMS) at the point of acceptance. Allow about four weeks for processing.

NIHMS requires two separate human approvals, and both must come from an author or the PI. Neither can be delegated to an administrator.

1. Initial approval. You confirm the correct files were uploaded and enter the funding information.
2. Final approval. After NIHMS converts the files, you review the PMC-ready version and release it.

The PMCID is assigned only after the final approval. A manuscript that has been uploaded but not finally approved sits indefinitely and is not given a PMCID, which means it is not compliant. Missing that second approval email is the single most common cause of non-compliance we see.

Listing MacCHESS support on your deposit

When you deposit, you must link the submission to a source of NIH funding. If you hold NIH support of your own, use your own award.

If you do not hold NIH funding, attach the submission to the MacCHESS award so the deposit is properly associated to: 
P30GM124166, Macromolecular Diffraction at CHESS (MacCHESS)

Why this matters

MacCHESS reports the publications that come out of the facility to NIH in its annual progress report. If a paper we cite does not have a PMCID, NIH will not process our non-competing continuation award until compliance is demonstrated. That has already happened once, and it delayed funding for beamline operations and staff. Getting your PMCID sorted at acceptance costs you a few minutes and saves the facility a great deal.

3. Tell us about your paper

Please send us the citation once your paper is accepted or published, including the DOI and the beamline you used. We use this for our NIH and NSF reporting, and the publication record is part of how the facility's renewal is evaluated.
macchess-admin@cornell.edu

4. Questions???

If you are unsure whether a paper is compliant, you can check its status in My NCBI under My Bibliography once your NCBI account is linked to eRA Commons. Compliance shows as a colored status against each citation. If you are stuck, contact us and we will help you work out which step is outstanding.

Useful links: