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DOI & PMID: What Are They?

This guide will assist you with understanding DOIs and PMIDs and how they are used in scholarly work.

What is a PMID?

PMID (PubMed Identifier) is a unique numerical identifier assigned by the NIH National Library of Medicine to articles in PubMed which can be used to search for and access those articles.

Where Do You Find a PMID?

You can find the PMID on the article's record page in PubMed.

  • Look under the citation/abstract portion


The PMID can also be found at the end of a PubMed citation.

What About PMCIDs?

PMCIDs are unique identifiers for articles that are included in PubMed Central (PMC).

  • They can be found on the article's record page under the citation/abstract section.
  • PMCID numbers also appear in PubMed records.

              This records contains both a PMID and PMCID

PMID vs PMCID

PMID (PubMed Identifier) PMCID (PubMed Central Identifier)

Assigned by the National Library of Medicine to each citation indexed in PubMed.

Assigned by the National Library of Medicine for each full-text article in PubMed Central.

Links to abstract of a publication in PubMed.

Links to full-text article in PubMed Central.

Not directly related to NIH Public Access Policy

Required for compliance with the NIH Public Access Policy when citing papers supported by NIH funding.

  • Think of the "C" in PMCID as indicating compliance with the public access policy