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.