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PMC Article Previewer

The PMC Article Previewer is a great way to preview your articles to see how they will appear in PMC. The Previewer will also test whether your XML tagging generates warnings or errors. It runs many of the same processes that are used in the PMC production workflow.

Get Started

With it you can:

  • Upload and process an article (with or without associated files) using most of the same steps used in the PMC production workflow
  • See any associated errors and warnings
  • Preview the article as it would appear in PubMed Central

What it can't do:

  • Upload multiple articles in a single zip package
  • Report on missing files that are referenced in the XML
  • Preview movies or supplemental material that are supplied as files in the package
  • Preview math tagged in TeX and LaTeX. (You can preview math only if it is tagged in MathML.)
  • Tell you if there are inconsistencies with publication dates within an issue

The process is now easier:

Drag and drop or browse to select at least one XML, TAR, TGZ or ZIP file to upload.

  • While you can upload TAR, TGZ, or ZIP files, note that only 1 article XML file is allowed per file. We are unable to handle multiple articles per compressed package.

  • To preview images, include them in the TAR, TGZ, or ZIP file. NOTE: Supplemental files, videos, etc. may be uploaded, but they will NOT be available for preview. You will get an error message if you click on their links.

The page will automatically refresh with updates as the article is uploaded and processed. Errors and warnings will be displayed as necessary.

Click on the article title to preview, or click the Errors/Warnings links to view them.

Requirements and Restrictions

  • You must have a MyNCBI account to upload files and see converted articles. Learn more about MyNCBI and create an account if you don't have one.
  • Articles must be in JATS or NLM XML or any XML DTD that PMC currently accepts for data submissions. See the full list of accepted Schemas below.
  • Files uploaded can be XML, ZIP, TAR or TGZ.
  • Only one article may be included in a ZIP, TAR, or TGZ file package, however you are able to upload multiple files at once.
  • You can upload all associated file types along with the XML file in your compressed file package. However, the previewer will only process and preview image files.

Problems? Questions?

Why hasn't my article converted after 30 minutes?

If your article hasn't converted after 10-15 minutes and it's just XML, look for a warning or error message. If you have lots of images, be patient. If that doesn't help, contact PMC. Please provide the TM Session ID that will appear in your Warning or Error message.

How is a warning different from an error?

A warning doesn't stop your article from previewing, but it might be giving you some tagging guidance that could be useful for finding problems or improving your tagging. An error will stop an article from processing and previewing.

When I use the online the Style Checker, I don't get the same warnings and errors as here. Why not?

In the PMC Article Previewer and in the PMC production workflow, all articles are first converted to our in-house "flavor" of JATS. The Style Checking is done after the in-house conversion. This allows us to account for different tagging rules, while giving us standard XML that we can use for presentation on the Web.

PMC can be contacted with questions about the PMC Article Previewer at pmc@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.

Supported Schemas

PMC supports all the schemas below. In the PMC Article Previewer and in the PMC production workflow, all articles are first converted to our in-house "flavor" of JATS. The preview shown in the PMC Article Previewer is based on the converted XML. The Style Checking is done after the in-house conversion.

  • NISO Journal Article Tag Suite (JATS)
  • NLM Archiving and Interchange Tag Set
  • NLM Journal Publishing Tag Set
  • Allen Press DTD for Online Journals
  • American Chemical Society Journals DTD
  • American Institutue of Physics Article DTD
  • APA Journal Publishing and Interchange Suite
  • Atypon Systems DTD
  • Blackwell Publishing Group DTD
  • BioMed Central Full Length Article DTD
  • BMJ Publishing Group Journal DTD
  • Cadmus Journal Services Full Text DTD
  • Capital City Press Press DTD
  • DocBook XML DTD
  • Elsevier Journal Article Input DTD
  • HighWire Press Full Length Article DTD
  • Karger Article DTD
  • Keton Full Text DTD
  • Nature Publishing Group XML Article DTD
  • Nature Publishing Group Specialist Journals DTD
  • NRC Research Press Consolidated rparticle DTD
  • OSA Article DTD
  • Ovidbase DTD
  • Oxford University Press DTD Article Science and Medical
  • Springer A++ DTD
  • TaxPub Taxonomic Treatment Publishing DTD
  • Taylor & Francis DTD
  • Thieme Journals DTD
  • University of Chicago Press Article DTD