March 2015

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has announced a public access plan, Today’s Data, Tomorrow’s Discoveries, that details the requirements for providing public access to publications and conference papers drawn from NSF-funded research. NSF released the plan in consort with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy’s memorandum, Increasing Access to the Results of Federally Funded Scientific Research.

The public access plan will go into effect in January 2016 upon release of the Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide. At that time, NSF-funded articles in peer-reviewed journals and papers accepted for juried conference proceedings will be required to be deposited into a NSF-designated public repository. Peer-reviewed journal articles or papers accepted for conference proceedings authored by NSF employees would also need to be deposited into the repository.

In each case, submission of papers would be required 12 months after publication. However, NSF will seek eight categories of metadata to be included in the repository on initial publication of the article: a persistent identifier; author names with associated persistent identifiers; article title; journal or serial titles; agency name(s) and award numbers; representation of intellectual property rights; links to underlying data; and an abstract.

NSF will initially use the Department of Energy’s Public Access Gateway for Energy and Science as the agency’s public repository. Further guidance will be provided in April and June on NSF’s public access webpage.

“AERA applauds the National Science Foundation’s efforts to increase access to important scientific advances borne from the agency’s funding,” said Felice J. Levine, AERA Executive Director. “AERA has long supported the principle of providing public access to research and scholarly articles, whether federally funded or not.

Related article: “AERA Executive Director Comments on Federal Open Access Policies,” AERA Highlights, May 2013