January 2012  

This month, AERA filed comments on federal research policy in response to two calls issued by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. AERA’s comments seek to provide useful information and perspectives to OSTP on public access to publications and to data stemming from federally funded research.

The request for information (RFI) entitled “Public Access to Peer-Reviewed Scholarly Publications Resulting From Federally Funded Research” was issued on November 4 by OSTP and consists of a series of questions about increasing and managing access to such publications, protecting intellectual property interests, and forging public-private partnerships to achieve common access goals.

AERA’s reply filed January 12 supports increasing access to peer-reviewed journal articles and protecting the interests of key stakeholders in the publications process, including authors, publishers, and funding agencies. AERA also proposes to OSTP the use of toll-free hyperlinks from any federal grants database to peer-reviewed articles that stem from federal grants. This method of giving federal databases toll-free access to an article’s version of record is an example of a public-private partnership that may be forged to everyone’s benefit.

The RFI entitled “Public Access to Digital Data Resulting From Federally Funded Scientific Research” was issued November 10 by OSTP and consists of a series of questions about increasing access to such data, ensuring proper researcher credit and protecting intellectual property interests, and ensuring adequate data management and preservation.

AERA’s January 12 reply supports production, sharing, and preservation of digital data and also emphasizes the importance of sharing data collection instruments, the use of transparent and comprehensible metadata, and the development of software to enable data sharing. AERA’s comment also supports data archiving requirements and inclusion of an overall data management plan and evaluation in all federal grants and contracts. AERA also encourages use of and support for data repositories such as the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) and the proper citation of data sets using consistent formats.