Public Access Requirements for Federally Funded Research

Summary provided by Summer Durrant, Suzanne Huffman, Erin Morris (UMW Libraries)
September 2015

In February 2013, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) issued a memorandum directing federal agencies with over $100 million in annual R&D expenditures to develop a plan for increasing public access to the results of funded research, including both peer-reviewed publications and research data. For example,

  • National Science Foundation (NSF) – Final accepted peer-reviewed articles and juried conference proceedings must be archived in the DOE PAGES repository no later than 12 months after publication. This will be required for all new projects beginning in 2016. Research data should be deposited in an appropriate repository as indicated in the data management plan (DMP); this has been in effect since NSF began requiring DMPs in 2011.[1]
  • National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) – While NEH does not have a public access plan at this time (and is not required by the OSTP memorandum), the NEH Office of Digital Humanities does require all grant applications to submit a DMP that addresses the types of data that will be collected (e.g., software code, digital tools, and geospatial coordinates) and how the data will be made available to others.[2]

See also the information about required data management plans.

[1] http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2015/nsf15052/nsf15052.pdf

[2] http://www.neh.gov/files/grants/data_management_plans_2015.pdf