Public Access to Federally Funded Research (US0107)

Provide Public Access to Federally Funded Research Primarily through the National Science and Technology Council (Council), the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy coordinates United States efforts to make the results of Federally funded scientific research more accessible and useful to the public, industry, and the scientific community. In the Council’s Subcommittee on Open Science, thirty-two United States agency funders collaborate to improve the preservation, discoverability, accessibility, and usability of Federally funded scientific research, with the aims of bolstering the reliability of that research, accelerating scientific discovery, stimulating innovation, enhancing economic growth and job creation. In 2018, the Subcommittee on Open Science was re-chartered to promote open science principles across the Federal Government and increase public access to Federally-funded research results. The Subcommittee’s priorities include: (1) Facilitating coordination across Federal Government agencies on open science efforts; (2) Developing appropriate incentives to encourage researchers to adopt open science principles; (3) Streamlining and synchronizing agency and researcher data management practices for maximum utility to the public; (4) Collaborating with academia, researcher communities, and industry toward the development of research data standards that further open science. As part of the Subcommittee’s objectives, it will develop a report that provides recommendations for improvements to existing Federal open access policies and continued collaboration between agencies on achieving open access objectives.

3. Provide Public Access to Federally-Funded Research

Main Objective

“Develop a report that provides recommendations for improvements to existing Federal open access policies and continued collaboration between agencies on achieving open access objectives.”

Milestones

None provided.

Editorial Note: For the complete text of this commitment, please see the United States’ action plan at: https://open.usa.gov/assets/files/NAP4-fourth-open-government-national-action-plan.pdf.

Commitment analysis

This commitment directs the U.S. National Science and Technology Council (Office of Science and Technology Policy) to broaden public access to federally-funded research, specifically by having the Sub-Committee on Open Science produce a report on “recommendations for improvements to existing Federal open access policies and continued collaboration between agencies on achieving open access objectives.”

The commitment follows directly from Commitment 20 of the U.S.’ third NAP on “Open Science,” of which the first milestone was “increase public access to results of federally-funded scientific research,” led by the U.S. Office of Science and Technology Policy. [35] More specifically, that milestone aimed to ensure that “all Federal agencies that spend more than $100 million per year on research and development finalize plans and implement policies and programs to make scientific publications and digital data resulting from Federally funded research accessible to and usable by scientists, entrepreneurs, educators, students, and the general public.” [36] By the end of the reporting cycle for NAP3, all 16 federal agencies subject to the commitment had released public access plans, 11 of 16 agencies had implemented data management plans, and digital repositories for federally-funded research existed for all agencies with active public access plans. The report envisioned under this commitment will provide recommendations for further improvements to these efforts.

The commitment is relevant to the OGP value of access to information by nature of its emphasis on making federally-funded research available to the public.

The magnitude of federally-funded research is substantial. The National Science Foundation reports that federal research and development obligations reached roughly $129.5 billion in fiscal year 2018, an increase of 8.8% over the previous fiscal year, [37] and far exceeding an increase of 2.7% from FY2016−2017. Preliminary data for FY2019 puts the figure at 9.6% relative to FY18, marking a third consecutive year-on-year increase. [38]

However, the IRM researcher assesses the commitment as having a minor potential impact. This is particularly evident when its limited output of a single recommendations report is evaluated against the more substantial work of the previous action plan, which developed and implemented policies facilitating open access to federally-funded research.

Commitment 3. ProvidePublic Access to Federally Funded Research

● Verifiable: Yes

● Does it have an open government lens? Yes

● Potential for results: Minor

● Completion: Complete

● Did it open government? Major

Implementing Agency: Office of Science and Technology Policy, National Science and Technology Council

Context and Objectives

The aim of this commitment was to produce a report with recommendations for improvements to existing federal open access policies and continued collaboration between agencies to provide open access of federally funded research. The commitment contained no further milestones.

This commitment built upon the results of another commitment included in the previous NAP, aimed at ensuring that all federal agencies that spend more than $100 million per year on research and development design and implement policies to make scientific publications and digital data resulting from federally funded research “accessible to and usable by scientists, entrepreneurs, educators, students, and the general public.” [10] By the end of the NAP3’s reporting cycle, all 16 federal agencies subject to the commitment had released public access plans and created digital repositories, and 11 had implemented data management plans.

The sheer magnitude of federally funded research made this commitment relevant to the national context. According to data from the National Science Foundation, federal obligations for research and experimental development reached $142.4 billion in FY 2019 and $167.4 billion in FY 2020 and are estimated to have increased an additional 7% to $179.5 billion in FY 2021. [11]

The IRM assessment did not foresee any obstacles that could negatively impact the commitment’s implementation. IRM rated the commitment as having a minor potential impact because its only planned output was a recommendations report. That report was not likely to have an impact unless its recommendations were made mandatory and implemented. The low ambition of the commitment contrasted unfavorably with its predecessor in NAP3, which had resulted in the development and implementation of policies that had made a difference in the public availability and accessibility of federally funded research.

Did It Open Government? Major

The commitment was implemented with a higher level of ambition than it originally had. As written in the NAP, the commitment did not include any milestones or specific activities beyond the publication of a recommendations report. Its implementation yielded not only such a report but also federal guidance mandating all federal agencies to update their public access policies before a certain date.

In May 2022, the National Science and Technology Council released a recommendations report. [12] The report aimed to improve consistency across federal departments and agencies in the instructions they provide to researchers about selecting repositories for data resulting from federally funded research. The report identifies the desirable characteristics of online public access data repositories to ensure that research data are FAIR—findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable—while protecting privacy and security.

This was followed by a Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies issued by the head of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, Dr. Alondra Nelson, in August 2022. [13] Aimed at making the results of taxpayer-supported research freely available, this update to federal policy guidance went further than a mere report with recommendations. It provided detailed guidance for federal agencies to update their public access policies to make federally funded research and publications publicly accessible. The update also mandated all federal agencies to have fully implemented updated policies by the end of 2025.

The guidelines drew from the lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic, stating that “when federally funded research is available to the public, it can improve lives, provide policy makers with important evidence with which to make critical decisions, accelerate the rates of discovery and translation, and drive more equitable outcomes across every sector of society.” [14]

The pandemic appears to have catalyzed the ambitious implementation of this commitment. As laid out in the commitment highlight posted on the USAGov website, [15] “all 20+ US Federal science agencies have implemented policies to make published results of federally funded research and associated data freely available to the public.” And more than 2.4 million published articles were made publicly accessible through designated repositories. Partnerships with scholarly publishers made millions more articles freely available. This includes more than 7.3 million in the biomedical and life sciences, available in the online National Library of Medicine. [16]

These efforts by federal science agencies, coordinated through the National Science and Technology Council’s Subcommittee on Open Science, supported the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Open access was in turn boosted by pandemic needs. Following a call to action by science policy leaders of the US and 11 other countries in March 2020, more than 50 scholarly publishers agreed to provide immediate free access to journal articles related to COVID-19 and coronaviruses through major open science platforms. [17] Within weeks, collaboration by public and private partners resulted in the establishment of the COVID-19 Open Research Dataset (CORD-19). CORD-19 initially contained 29,000 full-text articles and preprints and now encompasses more than 275,000. Artificial intelligence experts developed text and data mining techniques to help scientists working on COVID-19 respond to their questions using the information contained in the database. Two major text mining challenge competitions subsequently attracted more than 1,500 unique contributions, and the database has so far been downloaded more than 131,000 times. [18]

Looking Ahead

This commitment was carried forward from the previous NAP. Contrary to expectations, it made substantial further contributions to opening government that are expected to have lasting results.

In turn, the commitment is also being carried forward under NAP5. The new commitment, “Broaden Public Access to Federally Funded Research Findings and Data,” acknowledges the persistence of barriers to access of federally funded science and data. Unlike its predecessor, which focused on the supply side, the new commitment puts the spotlight on users. It seeks to broaden access “through several mechanisms, including through the National Science and Technology Council’s Subcommittee on Open Science; by permitting researchers to include publication and data sharing costs in their research budget proposals to Federal grant programs; by launching programs aimed at awarding more grants to early-stage researchers as well as encouraging a diverse pool of award applicants; and by exploring new incentive structures to recognize institutions and researchers who are supporting public access to data and research.” [19]

To realize its potential, the new commitment should maintain the focus on easing access by the final users of the data.