The White House rang in the new year by declaring 2023 a Year of Open Science, featuring actions across the U.S. government to advance open research while accelerating discovery and innovation, promoting public trust, and driving more equitable outcomes. The announcement comes on the heels of the August 2022 Memorandum on Ensuring Free, Immediate, and Equitable Access to Federally Funded Research issued by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). This guidance marks a major advance in delivering equitable access to America’s research, while enabling all communities to take part in the process and products of discovery.
The policy builds on a foundation of progress and collaboration across federal agencies, as they have worked to further the goals of open science, catalyzed by an OSTP Memorandum issued exactly ten years ago, on February 22, 2013, on Increasing Access to the Results of Federally Funded Research. This ten-year anniversary provided federal agencies with an opportunity to reflect on the great strides they have made as they for the decade ahead – one that will deliver equitable access to discovery and usher new possibilities across the research enterprise.
Here is a living timeline detailing some of the major actions supported by key policy changes across the federal government as they've moved along the journey towards open science and research.
The Increasing Access to the Results of Federally Funded Scientific Research policy memorandum (colloquially referred to as the Holdren Memo) directed US Federal agencies with research and development expenditures above $100 million to develop public access plans (see below) to support increased public access to the results of this research. Dr. John Holdren responded directly to a We The People petition about the memo when it was released, and that can be read here. A White House summary from 2016 about the ongoing impact of the memo can be found here.
On the same day, Executive Order 13642, Executive Order -- Making Open and Machine Readable the New Default for Government Information, and Open Data Policy—Managing Information as an Asset (Memorandum M-13-13), was released. These two documents issued guidance on how government agencies ought to be making their data open and machine-readable.
The CDC developed an operational policy Public Access to CDC Funded Publication requiring all CDC-funded peer-reviewed publications to be stored in "stable archives" and made freely available to the public.
The U.S. Geological Survey launches the USGS Data Management Website.
The Department of Energy Public Access Gateway for Energy and Science (DOE PAGES) is the DOE discovery tool, developed by the DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI), that makes peer-reviewed scholarly scientific publications resulting from DOE research funding publicly accessible to read, download, and analyze. DOE PAGES was developed to implement DOE’s Public Access Plan and offers free public access to the best available full-text version of DOE-funded scholarly publications - either the peer-reviewed, accepted manuscript or the published scientific journal article.
A precursor to the DoD's public access plan was the Public Access to the Results of Department of Defense-Funded Research which directed all authors funded by the DoD to submit final, peer-reviewed journal manuscripts to Defense Technical Information Center.
This plan is issued in response to the Holdren memo. This plan expanded the breadth of NASA’s open-access culture to include data and publications for all of the scientific research that the NASA sponsors.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence lists all of its OpenGov initiatives here, including the Open Government Plan, and initiatives on Open Data, Records Management, Public Participation and Information Sharing.
NIH issues its Genomic Data Sharing Policy, which expands the genome-wide association studies (GWAS) policy and promotes sharing, for research purposes, of large-scale human and non-human genomic data generated from NIH-funded research.
The U.S. Geological Survey publishes a Scientific Data Lifecycle Model.
- Department of Agriculture public access plan
- Department of Energy public access plan
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration public access plan
NIST's Managing Public Access to Results of Federally Funded Research Policy stated that NIST will "promote the deposit of scientific data arising from unclassified research and programs...free of charge in publicly accessible database." This policy does not apply to Standard Reference Data, which NIST has the authority to license. Release of the policy was accompanied by guidance on Managing Public Access to Results of Funded Research.
NIST data and results can be found in the following online locations: NIST website, Peer-reviewed papers are in PMC, NIST Technical series and other papers not subject to peer-review are in govinfo, and NIST data is available through the Science Data Portal and on data.gov.
Accompanying its public access plan, NOAA released a new policy on Public Access Policy for Scholarly Publications. This policy required NOAA publishers "to submit all digital NOAA research publications" to the "NOAA Central Library for inclusion in the NOAA Institutional Repository."
As part of the CDC's public access plan, CDC Stacks is identified as the official repository for archiving manuscripts.
In order to guide its operating divisions in creating public access plans in accordance with the Holdren Memo, HHS released Guiding Principles and Common Approach for Enhancing Public Access to the Results of Research Funded by HHS Operating Divisions. There are two, primary components to this guidance: "The first relates to making the publications resulting from our funded research freely available to the public. The second relates to making the scientific data publicly available in digital formats."
NIH completes updates to its Public Access Policy, which ensures the public has access to all published results of NIH-funded research via PubMed Central. Details on submission methods can be found here.
As part of the Department of Transportation's public access plan, all authors funded by DOT are required to submit publications not specifically precluded by privacy, confidentiality, or security concerns to the DOT National Transportation Library (NTL) digital repository.
NSF's robust public access plan, Increasing Access to the Results of Research Funded by the National Science Foundation and an accompanying FAQ (last updated in 2018) provide robust guidance for NSF-funded researchers on how to make their data and research accessible.
DOE released the DOE Policy for Digital Research Data Management as part of the implementation of DOE’s Public Access Plan. The policy requires that all funded research activities have an associated Data Management Plans.
USDA's National Agricultural Library launched PubAg as part of the implementation of its Public Access Plan. PubAg provides access to peer-reviewed scholarly articles, including full text where possible, related to the agricultural sciences including nutrition, food safety, food quality, animal and crop production and protection, natural resources, sustainable agricultural systems, rural development, agricultural economic and policy issues, agricultural imports and exports, agricultural statistics, extramural research, and Extension education.
USDA's National Agricultural Library launched Ag Data Commons as part of the implementation of its Public Access Plan. Ag Data Commons is a catalog and repository for USDA-funded research data, providing rich information about the data and links to associated scholarly articles and other research output.
The U.S. Geological Survey launches the Science Data Catalog, a comprehensive metadata catalog facilitating discovery and access to USGS research and monitoring data.
The Smithsonian Institution's Public Access Plan takes effect. The plan marks the start of Smithsonian's implementation to make certain publications and supporting data resulting from federally funded research available through Smithsonian Research Online (SRO) website, Smithsonian-approved repositories, and/or its participation in CHORUS, a nonprofit organization that helps federal entities track public access compliance.
The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) launches its open data catalog site, which comprises agency data such as grants administration and data about museums, libraries, and related organizations. The resource puts IMLS data at the fingertips of researchers, developers, and interested members of the public who want to dig deeper.
- National Institute of Standards and Technology public access plan
- National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration public access plan
- Department of Defense public access plan
- Department of Health and Human Services public access plan for Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
- Department of Health and Human Services public access plan for Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
- Department of Health and Human Services public access plan for Food and Drug Administration
- Department of Health and Human Services public access plan for National Institutes of Health
- Department of Transportation public access plan
- Department of Veterans Affairs public access plan
- National Science Foundation public access plan
- Smithsonian Institution public access plan
The USDA's Scientific Integrity Policy or DR 1074-001 is designed to "ensure the highest level of integrity in all aspects of the Department’s and USDA agencies’ involvement with scientific and technological processes, research, analyses, and products" including the open, accessible and online distribution of all scientific data used to develop policy.
HHS/NIH issued the Final Rule for Clinical Trials Registration and Results Information Submission (42 CFR Part 11) clarifying and expanding the registration and results information submission requirements for clinical trials of FDA-regulated drugs, biological products, and devices. This regulation takes effect in January 2017.
As a result of NOAA's public access plan, its Data and Publication Sharing Directive for NOAA Grants, Cooperative Agreements, and Contracts from 2012 is revised to impose requirements regarding the sharing of proposals as well as research data in a timely fashion "both on NOAA Programs that issue grants and on grant recipients." Specifically, it required that "data that underlie the conclusions of peer-reviewed scientific publications be made available for discovery, retrieval, and analysis for free at the time of publication." This data is submitted to the NOAA National Data Centers for archiving.
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality released an updated Policy for Public Access to AHRQ-Funded Scientific Publications that required AHRQ-funded authors to "submit an electronic version of the author’s final peer-reviewed accepted manuscript to the National Library of Medicine's PubMed Central (PMC) upon acceptance by the journal."
The CDC and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) updated their 2005 Policy on Releasing and Sharing Data to the Policy on Public Health and Research and Nonresearch Data Management and Access. This policy addresses data management and accessibility of public health data collected and generated by the CDC and ATSDR, as well as the limitations "imposed by law, ethical considerations, resources, technology, data quality" and the need to ensure privacy and confidentiality when working with public health data.
As part of its public access plan, Guidance for Public Access: Improving Access to Results of Federally Funded Scientific Research, the Department of Education directs all researchers to submit final manuscripts to ERIC, and Institute of Education Sciences online repository. Further information can be found here.
The DHS's public access plan included requirements for future, DHS-funded work to be accessible to the public. It also said, " Implementation of this plan will apply initially to the scholarly publications associated with both intramural and extramural efforts and will go into effect during FY17. Archiving of digital data sets associated with these efforts will be implemented during FY18. DHS plans to have standard department-wide language in place by the end of FY17 to more efficiently manage this process."
The Environmental Protection Agency's public access plan included a requirement for all EPA-funded research to be deposited in NIH's PubMed Central.
Along with its public access plan, Public Access to Results of Federally Funded Research at the U.S. Geological Survey: Scholarly Publications and Digital Data, US Geological Survey released a training module on the plan. The public access plan requires for data and research to be made available to the public via the USGS Publications Warehouse. Further, the plan lays out requirements for the quality of scientific data, which are summarized here. Additional USGS data is found on the Science Data Catalog of data.gov.
The U.S. Geological Survey issued four new data management and release policies that underpin the USGS Public Access Plan including requirements for data management plans, metadata for scientific data, digital object identifiers, review and approval, and data preservation.
- Department of Education public access plan
- Department of Health and Human Services public access plan for Administration for Community Living
- Department of Homeland Security public access plan
- Environmental Protection Agency public access plan
- Office of the Director of National Intelligence public access plan
- US Agency for International Development public access plan
- US Geological Survey public access plan
On 9 Jan 2017, OSTP memo announces that all agencies have completed public access plans in compliance with the 2013 OSTP Memorandum.
In November of 2017, NIST released three, separate directives to further clarify and provide resources regarding its public access policy. These are the Guidance for Review of Data Management Plans Submitted with Applications and Proposals for NIST Funding for Scientific Research, the order on the Preservation and Maintenance of Published Research Data, and procedures on Managing Public Access to External Research Funded by NIST.
In accordance to FDA's public access plan, a staff manual on Access to Results of FDA-Funded Scientific Research was released, to provide resources to ensure transparency and maximum public access possible of FDA-funded research. APIs as well as data and research is available at openFDA.
DOE CODE is the software services platform and search tool for DOE-funded code, developed and maintained by DOE OSTI. DOE CODE provides functionality for collaboration, archiving, and discovery of scientific and business software. The tool was launched in 2017 to replace an earlier system and to help implement M-16-21 – Federal Source Code Policy: Achieving Efficiency, Transparency, and Innovation through Reusable and Open Source Software.
The Interagency DOI Service is provided by DOE OSTI to other US government agencies that would like to assign DOIs to their research outputs. DOE OSTI provides administrative and technical support, a community of practice, and a submission platform to assigns and registers DOIs with DataCite to aid in citation, discovery, retrieval, and reuse. Through a DataCite Consortium, the service has been provide since 2017 and is done on a cost-reimbursable basis.
HHS ACL updated its public access plan to establish a mechanism for compliance with public access policy, make research and data more readily available to the public, and increase the use of ACL research results.
DOT’s National Transportation Library (NTL) launches its new Repository & Open Science Access Portal (ROSA P) to make DOT research easier to find and to honor Rosa Parks, and the role of the Civil Rights Movement in making public transportation more equitable.
USGS named its first official Trusted Digital Repository, ScienceBase. The USGS now has five TDRs within the Bureau (ScienceBase, Alaska Science Center Data Repository, EROS, National Geologic Map Database, Coastal and Marine Geoscience Data System), and other approved repositories.
Title II of Public Law 115-435, Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2018 requires for Federal agencies to publish their data online, and as open data.
Further, clarifying guidance on how individual researchers or research groups should share non-NIST data used in NIST-funded research is released in Guidance for Making Non-NIST Data Available Through NIST’s Data Management Infrastructure.
The latest version of the DoD Scientific and Technical Information Program (STIP) became available, providing regulations not only on the submission of publications to DTIC but also requiring Data Management Plans for all DoD-funded research.
NIH issues its Strategic Plan for Data Science, which provides a roadmap for modernizing the NIH-funded biomedical data science ecosystem. It outlines five overarching goals that address areas including data infrastructure and tools, workforce development, and sustainability.
USGS connects scientific data releases in repositories to associated scholarly publications in the Publications Warehouse.
The Strategy for Data Management and Computing for Groundbreaking Science 2019-2024 is released. It is designed to “enable transformational open science through continuous evolution of science data and computing systems for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.” Part of this strategy, “to develop and implement capabilities to enable open science” is the predecessor to TOPS.
In August 2019, the Smithsonian Institution launched Figshare repositories for open research data (Smithsonian Research Data) and for diamond open access scholarly monographs (Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press).
USGS publishes an Instructional Memorandum (IM) on the Release of Scientific Software and the USGS Software Management website.
The Department of Veterans Affairs issued Directive 1200.19, Presentation of Research Results, directing al VA investigators to make available all peer-reviewed publications. This directives includes a requirement to deposit manuscripts in PubMed Central.
In 2020, NASA released its first announcements to support open science.
In further support of requirements regarding data management plans, the DoD released a Data Strategy.
In further support of requirements in the the Public Access Policy, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality created a Data Management Plan Policy. This policy requires for applicants for AHRQ grants to include data management plans for "managing, storing and disseminating the primary data, samples, physical collections and other supporting materials created or gathered in the course of research funded by AHRQ."
NIH issues its Policy for Data Management and Sharing, which requires submission of a data management and sharing plan for all NIH-funded research and compliance with the approved plan. The plan will go into effect January 25, 2023.
DOE OSTI launched the US Government ORCID Consortium in 2020 to bring together US government and DOE-affiliated organizations looking to use, adopt, and integrate with ORCID. The consortium is a mechanism for organizations to become ORCID members. DOE OSTI leads the consortium and provides administrative and technical support, as well as a community of practice. The consortium was developed to provide a community around sharing best practices, facilitating ORCID integrations, and helping with challenges, while decreasing costs.
NIH launches its Preprint Pilot to test the feasibility of providing access to pre-prints reporting on NIH-funded research on COVID-19 through PubMed Central and Pubmed. The pilot aims to explore approaches to increasing the discoverability of early NIH research results posted to eligible preprint servers.
In February 2020, the Smithsonian Institution launched Smithsonian Open Access, an initiative that made publicly available more than 4.5 million 2D and 3D digital items from its collections that are free of copyright restrictions. Among museums and cultural institutions, this is the largest and most interdisciplinary open access program to date.
NASA released the Scientific Information policy for the Science Mission Directorate (SMD) Policy Document 41 or “SPD-41”. This policy describes how any scientific information produced using funding from SMD is shared. Scientific information, in this case, includes publications, data, and software produced as part of scientific research activities.
Agency for International Development released an open data plan called Policy on Development Data calling for "all USAID operating units, including its worldwide missions" to "ensure that USAID-funded data is centrally cataloged and made available to the public by default, with limited exceptions." An FAQ on the policy is available here. The Development Experience Clearinghouse is used to store technical and project materials and the Development Data Library contains data produced by USAID-funded projects.
In the Transportation Research Board 202 Annual Meeting workshop Open Science in Transportation: Challenges and Opportunities in a COVID-19 Era, US DOT contributes the presentation “U.S. Open Science Policy Perspectives & Transportation” https://doi.org/10.21949/1520725
On August 25, 2022 the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy issued updated public access policy guidance entitled Ensuring Free, Immediate, and Equitable Access to Federally Funded Research. In an accompanying blog-post, titled Breakthroughs for All: Delivering Equitable Access to America’s Research OSTP details how the new guidance increases equity across the federal research and development landscape by making research publications and supporting data funded by taxpayers publicly accessible, without an embargo or cost. The new guidance (colloquialy referred to as the Nelson Memo) calls for agencies with research and development expenditures to update their public access policies no later than December 31, 2025.
In August of 2022, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) announced that the Subcommittee on Science had officially chartered the NSTC Subcommittee on Open Science. The purpose of the Subcommittee is to coordinate and advance efforts related to open science across Federal agencies. Such efforts include, but are not limited to, making the products and processes of Federally funded research, including scholarly publications and data, more equitably findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable to the public, policymakers, industry, and the scientific community. The newly chartered Subcommitte, building off of its history as an interagency working group, expanded membership to be more inclusive and representative across the federal government and inaugurated NASA as a new agency co-chair (along with OSTP, NIH, and, NSF).
In accordance with their public access plan, USDA releases DR 1020-006, Public Access to Scholarly Publications and Digital Scientific Research Data, requiring that all USDA "peer-reviewed, scholarly publications and digital scientific research data assets arising from unclassified scientific research" will be made "accessible to the public, to the extent practicable."
NSTC issues Desirable Characteristics of Repositories for Data Resulting from Federally Funded Research, which provides guidance on repository characteristics to help make data FAIR and promote equitable access.
NIH launches the Generalist Repository Ecosystem Initiative (GREI), which brings together generalist repositories to collaborate on shared efforts to enhance the discoverability of NIH-funded data, including common metadata models, open metrics, and training for researchers.
NSF continued to fortify research infrastructures that support data sharing within multiple disciplines. Many individual NSF awards advanced data sharing networks and infrastructures in 2022. Major initiatives included:
- The Findable Accessible Interoperable Reusable Open Science Research Coordination Networks or “FAIROS RCN” program, which supports a cohort of 10 three-year, multi-institutional projects to start in 2023, and committed over $12.5 million to open science from all of NSF's seven directorates.
- The Research Data Ecosystem data platform to secure and share data at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research in Ann Arbor. This $38 million investment for transformative and interconnected social and behavioral sciences research is part of NSF's ongoing investment in mid-scale research infrastructure.
USGS publishes Opportunities To Improve Alignment With the FAIR Principles for U.S. Geological Survey Data.
NASA Releases updated Scientific Information Policy that is compliant with 2022 OSTP memo on public access.
The policy (SPD41a) describes how scientific information produced from SMD funding can be shared.Scientific information includes publications, data, and software produced as part of scientific activities.
The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) launches 2023 as a Year of Open Science to advance national open science policies across the federal government in 2023. The Year of Open Science features actions across the federal government throughout 2023 to advance national open science policy, provide access to the results of the nation’s taxpayer-supported research, accelerate discovery and innovation, promote public trust, and drive more equitable outcomes. The key initiatives include a unified federal definition of open science: "The principle and practice of making research products and processes available to all, while respecting diverse cultures, maintaining security and privacy, and fostering collaborations, reproducibility, and equity."
To advance equitable open science and promote public access to that science and to the development of open science networks and cyberinfrastructure, NSF will leverage powerful agency efforts and programs in its broadening participation portfolio, especially those through the Growing Research Access for Nationally Transformative Equity and Diversity program. Known as GRANTED, this new initiative addresses systemic barriers within the nation's research enterprise by improving research support and service capacity at emerging, developing and underserved research institutions. Public access promotion also complements other NSF efforts, including:
- The Minority Serving-Cyberinfrastructure Consortium or “MS-CC.”
- Build and Broaden: Enhancing Social, Behavioral and Economc Science Research and Capacity at Minority-Serving Institutions or “B2.”
- New and ongoing award solicitations, such as Pathways to Enable Open-Source Ecosystems and Campus Cyberinfrastructure, that foreground open science practices.
NIH has long championed principles of transparency and accessibility in NIH-funded research. As such, NIH supports the August 2022 OSTP Memorandum directing federal agencies to expedite access to results of federally funded research. The NIH Plan to Enhance Public Access to the Results of NIH-Supported Research (NIH’s Public Access Plan) provides a roadmap for how NIH will enhance access to research products, namely scholarly publications and scientific data, and will ensure these research products are useful and accessible to the public. NIH’s Public Access Plan is now available for public comment. Comments will be accepted until April 24, 2023 and can be submitted through the comment portal found here.
- The University of Michigan has a partial list of US federal agencies requiring data management plans here.