OSTP Federal Agencies Sharing Research: Home

The February 22, 2013 Memo

“The Administration is committed to ensuring that, to the greatest extent and with the fewest constraints possible . . . the direct results of federally funded scientific research are made available to and useful for the public, industry, and the scientific community.”

This public access policy applies to federal agencies with greater than $100 million in annual research and development expenditures and includes:

The direct results of federally funded scientific research are peer-reviewed publications and digital data. U of U policy on copyright ownership states 

"copyrightable material produced under grants or contracts from an external funding source shall be subject to conditions of the contract or grant with respect to ownership, distribution and use, and other residual rights, and shall be used and disseminated in compliance with all applicable laws."

Peer-Reviewed Publications

Agencies will require that Principal Investigators (PI) make peer-reviewed papers publicly accessible after a 12-month embargo period from the original date of publication. In order to be compliant, PIs will need to

• understand the specific requirements of the agency program
• check with CHORUS to determine if your journal publisher is participating and if yes, follow instructions
• Check with FundRef to determine if your journal publisher is participating and if yes, follow the instructions.
• if the publisher is not listed in CHORUS or FundRef, then know the public access policy of the journal publisher
• track the final, peer-reviewed manuscript for posting to agency-directed repository 

Digital Data

Agencies will require that Principal Investigators (PI) develop a data management plan. In order to be compliant, PIs will need to

• understand the specific requirements of the agency program
• share the data publicly unless the data management plan justifies not sharing