In late July 2014, the US Department of Energy (DOE) released its “Public Access Plan,” which responds to the February 2013 White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) memo on enhancing access to federally funded research. Under the plan, DOE has established a web-based portal, PAGES, that will make the metadata about and links to final, accepted peer-reviewed manuscripts available to the public.
In addition, DOE will maintain a “dark archive” of the peer-reviewed, final accepted manuscripts as a long-term preservation solution and, under certain circumstances, DOE will provide public access to these articles. The grantee will either deposit the manuscript in the DOE archive or provide DOE with metadata and a link to the article in another repository. DOE will link out via the CHORUS portal to publisher websites that will then provide access to the final published version of the record. If following the 12-month embargo a publisher does not make the final version publicly available, DOE will make the final, accepted manuscript publicly available.
As of October 1, DOE will include public access requirements in all grant award agreements. The DOE plan does not fully address issues concerning reuse and bulk downloading.
Regarding digital data, DOE is taking a “phased in approach.” By October 1, 2015, all DOE departments will develop consistent approaches to digital data management planning. Each grantee will be required to a include data management plan (DMP) in the grant proposal request. The plan states, “DMPs should describe whether and how data generated in the course of the proposed research will be shared and preserved and, at a minimum, describe how data sharing and preservation will enable validation of results, or how results could be validated if data are not shared or preserved. DMPs should provide a plan for making all research data displayed in publications resulting from the proposed research open, machine-readable, and digitally accessible to the public at the time of publication.”
Links to the federal agency plans and policies that have been released to date are being collected on the ARL website.
