PMC

PubMed Central (PMC) is a free digital archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature. It is maintained by the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and serves as a repository for full-text articles that can be read, downloaded, and reused in accordance with the terms set by publishers and licensors. PMC complements PubMed, which provides abstracts and indexing, by offering the complete text for many articles.

PMC began as a pilot project around 2000 and has grown into a central component of the NIH Public Access Policy, which requires that NIH-funded research be deposited in PMC and made publicly accessible. In practice, authors or publishers submit manuscripts or final published versions, which are archived in PMC and made available to the public after any applicable embargo period.

Content in PMC includes articles from thousands of journals across biomedical disciplines. Each article is assigned a PubMed Central ID (PMCID) and is indexed in the PubMed database, enabling cross-linking between abstracts and full text. The archive supports search and retrieval through the NCBI Entrez system and offers programmatic access via the E-utilities API. The license terms vary by article; NIH-funded content is generally open access, while publisher-deposited content may carry embargoes or licensing restrictions defined by the publisher.

PMC has influenced open access policy and scholarly communication by providing broad access to biomedical literature and enabling text and data mining within permitted terms. It remains a key resource for researchers, clinicians, and students. Note: PMC can also refer to other organizations or terms in different contexts, but PubMed Central is the most widely used reference in biomedical literature.