NIH grant holders know that manually entering citations into eRA Commons can be difficult and confusing, but on July 23, 2010, manual entry is going away! The NIH has found a more efficient, accurate, and easier way for eRA Commons users to manage their professional bibliographies, associate publications with their grant awards, and ensure compliance with the NIH Public Access Policy.
eRA Commons users are now required to sign up for a free My NCBI account from the National Center for Biotechnology Information. This account will allow you to import citation information from PubMed, PubMed Central, and NIH Manuscript Submission System (NIHMS), as well as helping you keep track of NIH Public Access Policy compliance by color-coding the articles according to their status in the NIHMS. Principal Investigators (PIs) will also be able to use their My NCBI accounts to delegate the responsibility of updating their bibliographies to assistants.
What Do I Have to Do?
1. Establish a My NCBI account, if PI does not already have one.
2. PI must link the My NCBI account to his/her eRA Commons account.
3. As of July 23, 2010, Commons will no longer support manual entry of citations. All new citations must be added through My NCBI accounts.
4. As of October 22, 2010, all citations previously entered manually into Commons will be removed from the Commons system. Therefore, move citations into the My NCBI account so they will show up on the PI’s professional bibliography and can be associated with future annual progress reports.
Please see the official NIH notice for more information and step-by-step help for setting up and using a My NCBI account.