Public Access to Federally-Funded Research
The University of Akron is a community of scholars and supports the free and open exchange of ideas and results from scholarly activities. University of Akron Rule 3359-11-17. As part of that commitment, the University provides the following information.
In 2022, the President announced the Administration's commitment to advance open science. Finally, federal agencies, which award grants, contracts, and cooperative agreements, have been working on specific requirements for open science. Two of these specific requirements are that publications resulting from federal funding be made freely available (or "Open Access") and that data generated from such federal support be deposited in a freely available database when possible.
Additional information on open science requirements for various federal agencies is available below.
Publications achieved through the use of Federal Funds must be made available through Open Access means.
NSF
Required
- Depositing publications (e.g. peer-reviewed, published journal articles and juried conference papers), which result from NSF-funded projects, in to the NSF Public Access Repository (NSF-PAR) is a requirement.
- To access the NSF Public Access Repository (NSF-PAR), you need to sign in to Research.gov and choose ‘Deposit publication’ from My Desktop. Alternatively, you will be prompted within Project Reports to deposit publications in NSF-PAR when reporting journals or juried conference papers as published.
- How-to Guide for Depositing Publications into NSF-PAR.
- Data Management Plans (soon to be called Data Management and Sharing plans) are required for all proposal submissions.
- Each directorate and division has its own guidance. See the guidance links at this page.
Recommended
- Though adding datasets to NSF-PAR is currently recommended, NSF is working towards making such an addition a requirement.
- A bonus to adding datasets to NSF-PAR is that those added auto-populate into NSF in-progress reports in the Project Reporting System in Research.gov.
- Information for how to add Dataset information to NSF-PAR.
NIH
Required
- NIH policy on public access requires that there is a Data Management & Sharing Plan submitted with all proposals and that all publications be made available for free 12 months after initial publication.
- This policy applies to all peer-reviewed articles resulting from research supported in whole or in part with direct costs from NIH, including research grant and career development awards, cooperative agreements, contracts, Institutional and Individual Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Awards, SBIR/STTR awards, and NIH intramural research studies.
- NIH Grants Policy Statement on Public Access
- Data Management & Sharing Policy
- NIH-funded investigators are required by Federal law to submit (or have submitted for them) to PMC an electronic version of the final, peer-reviewed manuscript upon acceptance for publication, to be made publicly available no later than 12 months after the official date of publication.
- When and how to comply with the publication requirement.
- Data Management & Sharing Plans must be written and compliance with the approved plan must be achieved.
- The written plan should include six elements, including how data will be made available to the scientific community, as described at this page.
- More information about the written plan may be accessed here.
Recommended
Repository listing for NIH-Supported Data Repositories Note that these are encouraged by NIH.
NIH recognizes that some data do not fit well in an NIH-supported data repository. For guidance and generalized data repositories, navigate to the NIH Generalist Repositories webpage.
Other Agency Policy & Guidance
- DoT Public Access Policy and FAQs
- DoT awardee PIs and key personnel must register for an ORCID before the research begins. The ORCID webpage contains information on how to obtain a free ORCID.
- DoT requires reporting of the research into the Research in Progress Database (RiP) before the research begins.
- Publications arising from DoT funding must be deposited into the National Transportation Library (NTL) digital repository. See the above links for more information
- DoD Public Access Policy
- Final, peer-reviewed manuscripts must be submitted to the DoD system for open access. Generally, there is an embargo period of 12 months before this requirement must be met.
- The manuscript repository is the Defense Technical Information Center
- DoD Open Access FAQs
- NASA Public Access Policy
- All NASA-funded researchers are required to ensure that copies of publicatons and associated data are made available through NASA's publicly available databases.
- PubSpace is NASA's repository
- DOI Bureaus and Offices include U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Buraeu of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, Bureau of Trust Funds Administration, Bureau of Indian Education, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, and Bureau of Reclamation. Funding from any of these Bureaus and Offices must follow the policy described below.
- Projects funded by the Department of the Interior require: All data, methodology, factual inputs, models, analyses, technical information, reports, conclusions, valuation products or other scientific assessments in any medium or form, including textual, numerical, graphic, cartographic, narrative, or audiovisual, resulting from a financial assistance agreement is available for use by the Department of the Interior, including being available in a manner that is sufficient for independent verification.
- Additionally, when the proposed research involves collection of geospatial data the PI should ensure a due diligence search at the GeoPlatform.gov list of datasets is performed to discover whether the needed geospatial-related data, products, or services already exist. If the required data set already exists, the PI must use it. If the required data is not already available, the PI must produce the proposed geospatial data, products, or services in compliance with applicable proposed guidance and standards established by the Federal Geospatial Data Committee (FGDC) posted at fgdc.gov. PIs must submit a digital copy of all GIS data produced or collected as part of the award funds to the DOI bureau or office via email or data transfer. All GIS data files shall be in open format. All delineated GIS data (points, lines, or polygons) should be established in compliance with the approved open data standards with complete feature level metadata.
- USGS Public Access Policy
- Journal publications to be deposited in the internal USGS Information Product Data System (IPDS) repository
- Journal articles to be made publicly available free-of-charge by the publisher at the time of publication
- Bureau-approved USGS series publications are released through the USGS Publications Warehouse immediately upon publication and are provided in a machine-readable format.
- Scholarly publications are maintained in a manner that ensures long-term preservation.
- Persistent identifiers for publications, authors, and awards are included in the publication metadata as applicable.
- All scientifically-relevant data, (that is, data associated with a scholarly publication and the supporting data collected by the project), will be made available free-of-charge for public access, unless the Bureau determines that a demonstrated circumstance restricts the data from being made publicly available; for example, in cases where access must be restricted because of security, privacy, confidentiality, or other constraints (SM 502.8).
- Scientific data management requirements must be followed, including the development of data management plans (DMPs), which must be part of the approved USGS project plans. The DMP details information such as acquisition method, quality assurance, security, disposition, and if applicable, circumstance restricting public access (SM 502.6).
- Metadata (using USGS endorsed metadata standards) must accompany the scientific data and this metadata record must be submitted to the USGS Science Data Catalog (SM 502.7).
- Scientific data approved for release are assigned a USGS digital object identifier.
USGS requires:
Additionally, data requirements are as follows:
Other Resources
- Because of its commitment to open science, the University of Akron Libraries has agreements with various publishers, which allow University of Akron researchers to publish their research as open access.
- More information on University of Akron open access agreements is available here.