Federal Open Data Requirements for Publicly Funded Research
Information on this page has been drawn from the UMD Libraries' Open Scholarship Services.
On August 25, 2022, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) published a memorandum regarding the open sharing of government-funded research. The memo, Ensuring Free, Immediate, and Equitable Access to Federally Funded Research, issues guidance to all federal agencies to develop plans ensuring that publicly funded research outputs will be openly available. This new and exciting commitment to knowledge equity will have important implications for University of Maryland researchers who are supported by federal grants and other financial investments.
With this announcement, the OSTP joins the University of Maryland and other research institutions who have already committed to equitable access and recognized the impact that open access to information will have on scientific advancement and our society.
The August 25th memo expands on a previous 2013 federal policy, which directed agencies spending more than $100 million dollars per year in research funding to ensure that publications and other research outputs were made publicly available. The new guidance takes several further steps to advance access to research, including:
- The memo calls for the expansion of open access publishing requirements beyond the 20 agencies implicated in the 2013 policy. All federal agencies, regardless of the amount of money that organization spends on research funding are asked to ensure that research is openly published.
- Access to research outputs must be immediate and simultaneous with first publication, abolishing a 12 month embargo period publishers and authors had previously been allowed to impose on works.
- In addition to written research papers and reports, data needed to validate research claims is to be made immediately available. Agencies are encouraged to make book chapters, monographs, white papers, and other publication formats available, as well as journal articles.
- Materials will be made available in machine readable formats with appropriate accompanying metadata. This increased focus on proper construction of digital components will increase the accessibility, indexing, and distribution of research materials in an online research ecosystem.
How is UMD Supporting Faculty in Meeting the New Federal Guidance?
The University of Maryland is raising awareness and collecting information on federal rules and guidelines
Although the OSTP issued its memo in August 2022, it laid out a a delayed action plan that required federal agencies to develop their own infrastructure plans and mandates for funded researchers. These plans will go into effect by 2025. We are already speaking to the UMD community about these new government initiatives. As new discussions and plans are released to the public, we will collect and provide access to updated information on this website, as well as on the UMD Libraries website and a variety of campus-wide communication channels.
Data Sharing and Publication
One of the most significant changes to public access requirements is the inclusion of data in the scope of research outputs that must be made openly available. We know this represents a significant change in the kinds of planning and tools that will need to go into planning future research projects. This website lays out the major steps the University is recommending that researchers follow in order to comply with new mandates, as well as the resources that are available to help you:
- Identify an appropriate publication or repository for your data as early as the grant application stage
- Use data management planning tools and services
- Access campus services to manage and store active data
- Deposit your data and share its location with grantors and for the university to record compliance
Having strong, well-constructed plans regarding your data management and publication will ensure that applications now and in the future to federal research funders are ready to compete under the terms of the new mandate.
Green OA resources available through the Equitable Access Policy and institutional repository, DRUM
Many, but not all, federal agencies have announced full details will require of researchers in order to comply with the OSTP guidance. The NIH, for instance, who have been under a federal public access mandate since 2013, have developed their own repository with requisite formatting and deposit formats. However, one way to make research available is through the process known as Green Open Access, whereby the researcher obtains or retains the right to make a version of their work openly available in a repository, while still working with a traditional publisher.
The University of Maryland Equitable Access Policy requires all eligible faculty members at University of Maryland to grant certain nonexclusive rights over their scholarly articles to the University of Maryland and allows the University to distribute peer-reviewed versions of the articles free-of-charge to the general public, through DRUM, the University of Maryland’s online institutional repository. As the administrators of the policy, the Libraries provide tools for advocating with their publishers to comply, including the Author Addendum and technical infrastructure, in the form of our institutional repository, DRUM, to host published research, data, and other supplemental materials.
| Agency | Publication Guidelines | Data Guidelines | Resources |
|---|---|---|---|
| Administration for Community Living (ACL) | Final peer-reviewed accepted journal manuscript should be submitted to PubMed Central. | Data should be made freely available and publicly accessible at time of publication via the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) . | ACL Public Access Plan |
| Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) | Final peer-reviewed accepted journal manuscript should be submitted to PubMed Central . The published version is also acceptable, if permitted by the publisher. | A data management plan is required. The plan will be evaluated by AHRQ for merit. Sharing of data should be timely, with the specific time dictated by the nature of the data. | AHRQ’s Publication Policy AHRQ’s Data Policy |
| Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) | Final peer-reviewed manuscripts should be submitted to PubMed Central within 12 months of publication. | A data management plan is required. Data sets must be published in a recognized scientific data repository within 30 months of the data set’s creation. | ASPR Access Plan |
| Centers for Disease Control (CDC) | Final peer-reviewed manuscript should be submitted to the National Institutes of Health Manuscript Submission System (NIHMS) . The author must also submit the manuscript to PubMed Central within 12 months of publication. | A data management plan is required. See page 3 of the data policy for specific requirements. | CDC’s Access Policy CDC Data Policy |
| Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) | Final peer-reviewed accepted journal manuscript should be submitted to PubMed Central . The published version is also acceptable, if permitted by the publisher. | A data management plan is required. Data will be made freely available and publicly accessible at the time of publication. | CMS Access Plan |
| Department of Agriculture (USDA) | Final peer-reviewed manuscripts, or the published version if the publisher permits, should be submitted to PubAg archive within 12 months of publication. | A data management plan that focuses on digital data fundamental to the conclusions of peer-reviewed scientific research publications is required. | USDA Access Plan |
| Department of Defense (DOD) | Final peer-reviewed paper should be submitted to the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) for publication. Articles must be available no later than 12 months after publication. | Data management plan (DMP) required for proposal, as well as a deposit of datasets supporting public research results. | DOD Access Plan |
| Department of Education (DoED) | Final peer-reviewed manuscript should be made openly accessible within 12 months of publication. Authors may submit their manuscript to ERIC , if the publisher permits. | Data should be made accessible through the use of a data archive or other avenue that the investigator and institution are responsible for. | Department of Education Access Plan |
| Department of Energy (DOE) | Submit final peer-reviewed journal manuscript to an open access repository, UMD’s DRUM , or to the Department of Energy’s PAGES . Metadata and a link to the text must be submitted to DOE’s Office of Scientific and Technical Education if the article is submitted to a repository. Alternatively, the article can be submitted directly to DOE through their e-link service . |
A data management plan is required. | DOE Access Plan DOE’s PAGES FAQ OSTI |
| Department of Homeland Security (DHS) | Final publication or peer-reviewed manuscript should be submitted to PubMed Central within 12 months of publication. | Data management plan required. Data should be submitted to a publicly accessible data repository. | DHS Access Plan |
| Department of Transportation (DOT) | When articles are accepted for publication, submit them to the National Transportation Library digital repository. Other written deliverables, such as final reports, must be submitted as well. Research project descriptions should be submitted to the Transportation Research Board’s Research in Progress database . | Data management plan required. The DMP should specifically focus on long-term preservation and access to digital data sets. The DMP must also indicate where the dataset will be deposited. Research project descriptions should be submitted to the Transportation Research Board’s Research in Progress database . | How to Comply with Data Submission DOT Access Plan |
| Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) | Peer-reviewed journal manuscripts should be submitted to PubMed Central no later than 12 months after publication. | Data management plan required. DMP should focus on research data supporting peer reviewed publications. The data should be made available in a publicly accessible data repository within 30 days of submission to PubMed. Metadata must be registered by the researcher in the EPA’s Environmental Dataset Gateway . | EPA’s Website EPA Update 2024 |
| Food and Drug Administration (FDA) | Final peer-reviewed manuscript should be submitted to PubMed Central. The FDA utilizes the NIH Manuscript Submission System (NIHMS) as the mechanism for submission through PubMed Central. | Data should be deposited in an existing public data repository. Alternative options are: Submit supplemental information to the publishing journal. (Smaller datasets) House the data on FDA web servers. Make the data available upon request. | FDA’s Public Access Webpage |
| Ford Foundation | All copyrightable products funded by the grant should be made freely available. These products include white pages, websites, and research reports, and should be licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. | Data sets are included in “all copyrightable products” and should be licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. | Ford Foundation’s Public Access Announcement |
| Gates Foundation | Publications should be openly accessible in a repository immediately upon publication. Publications should be licensed under Creative Commons. The Gates Foundation will pay “reasonable fees” to a publisher in order to meet open access publication requirements. | Data should be immediately accessible and open. | Gates Foundation’s Access Policy |
| National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) | Final peer-reviewed journal manuscripts, or final published version by publisher agreement, should be submitted to NASA PubSpace on the PubMed Central platform. Articles must be made available within 12 months of publication. | Data management plans that focus on research data that underlie the results and findings in peer-reviewed publications are required. The data must be made available at the time of publication or within a reasonable time period. Data can be made available through NASA archives or another repository as supplementary material. | NASA’s Access Plan 2024 |
| National Institutes of Health (NIH) | Final peer-reviewed manuscripts must be openly accessible through PubMed Central within 12 months of publication. Authors should submit their work here . | Data management and sharing plans are required for all grants resulting in the generation of scientific data. Data should be shared as soon as possible following publication. | NIH Public Access Policy Webpage NIH Data Management Policy |
| National Institute of Justice (NIJ) | N/A | A data archiving plan is required. Data sets resulting from funded research archived with the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (NACJD) and submitted 90 days before the end of the project period. | Data Archiving Plans for NIJ Funding Applicants |
| National Endowment for the Humanities: Office of Digital Humanities (ODH) | N/A | A data management plan is required. | ODH Website |
| National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) | Final peer-reviewed manuscript should be freely available in a journal associated with CHORUS , or the NIST repository. | Funding recipient must send descriptive information about the data, including a link to the published data, to the Federal Program Officer or designee, who will enter it into NIST’s Enterprise Data Inventory Tool . The funding recipient is responsible for depositing the data in a publicly accessible repository. | NIST’s Public Access Webpage |
| National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) | Final peer-reviewed manuscripts should be submitted to NOAA’s Institutional Repository within 12 months of publication. | Data management plans focusing on environmental data collected during the course of funded research should be submitted. Data sharing should be completed within two years and no later than the publication of a peer-reviewed article based on the data. Data should be submitted to the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information or to a publicly-accessible data repository. | NOAA’s Access Plan |
| National Science Foundation (NSF) | Final peer-reviewed manuscripts of journal articles and juried conference papers should be submitted to the NSF Public Access Repository within 12 months of publication. | A data management plan focusing on primary data, samples, and other supporting materials is required. DMPs should be limited to two pages. See the NSF’s DMP guidelines . | NSF’s Public Access Webpage |