How to use the Article Package Download service at ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pub/pmc?

The Article Package Download service at ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pub/pmc allows you to download article metadata, content, media files, supplementary materials in XML format and PDF (if present) in a single package file for Open Access Subset.

Article Package Download files are organized into sub-directories and files as shown below:

/oa_file_list.csv
/oa_file_list.txt
/oa_package/
  00/
    00/
      PMC1790863.tar.gz  
      PMC2329613.tar.gz  
      PMC2599765.tar.gz  
      ...
    ..
  ..

As you can see from the above list, the package file of each article is archived as .tar and compressed as .gz. It is located randomly in 2-level sub-directory of xx/xx. You need to download the oa_file_list.csv or oa_file_list.txt file to find out which article is located in which sub-directory.

The "oa_file_list" file contains several fields as shown in the following example:

File - oa_package/08/e0/PMC13900.tar.gz
Article Citation - Breast Cancer Res. 2001 Nov 2; 3(1):55-60
Accession ID - PMC13900
Last Updated - 2019-11-05 11:56:12
PMID - 11250746
License - NO-CC CODE

If you decompress and open the package file of an article, you will see several files. For example:

fyicenter$ gunzip PMC3065034.tar.gz 
fyicenter$ tar -xf PMC3065034.tar
fyicenter$ ls -l PMC3065034
     4725 Apr 26  2017 BCRI2011-164197.001.gif
   110840 Apr 26  2017 BCRI2011-164197.001.jpg
     2497 Apr 26  2017 BCRI2011-164197.002.gif
    53726 Apr 26  2017 BCRI2011-164197.002.jpg
     1782 Apr 26  2017 BCRI2011-164197.003.gif
    42992 Apr 26  2017 BCRI2011-164197.003.jpg
     2070 Apr 26  2017 BCRI2011-164197.004.gif
   114396 Apr 26  2017 BCRI2011-164197.004.jpg
     2273 Apr 26  2017 BCRI2011-164197.005.gif
    50779 Apr 26  2017 BCRI2011-164197.005.jpg
    51227 Apr 26  2017 BCRI2011-164197.nxml
  1274530 Apr 26  2017 BCRI2011-164197.pdf

⇒ PMC FTP Service - PDF File Download

⇐ PMC FTP Service - Bulk Download

⇑ PubMed Central (PMC) DOI Database

⇑⇑ DOI - Frequently Asked Questions