New Requirements for DOE-funded Researchers: Public Access to Data and Publications

In response to the 2013 Memorandum from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, “Expanding Public Access to the Results of Federally Funded Research,” the Department of Energy (DOE) has issued a Public Access Plan.  The DOE is the first agency to release its open access plan in response to this directive, which applies to the largest federal agencies.

doe logoThe aim of the directive is to ensure that “the direct results of federally funded scientific research are made available to and useful for the public, industry, and the scientific community.”

Publications

Under the DOE plan, researchers will be required to submit accepted manuscripts of publications that report on DOE-supported research to an open access repository such as DSpace@MIT.  Researchers will also need to submit information about their publications to the DOE’s Office of Scientific and Technical Information.   DOE will begin to include these requirements in award agreements as of October 1, 2014.

Data

Also under the plan, researchers will be required to include in grant proposals a Data Management Plan outlining how the data generated in research will be shared and preserved.   These requirements take effect October 1, 2014 for the DOE’s Office of Science and by October 1, 2015 for other DOE offices.

The Libraries can help you comply with these new requirements:

In coming months, the Libraries will be evaluating what other services may be of help to DOE-funded researchers. If you have comments or suggestions, please contact:

For publications: contact Ellen Finnie Duranceau, Program Manager, Scholarly Publishing, Copyright, and Licensing, MIT Libraries

For data: contact the MIT Libraries’ data management team