The Department of Education, the Agency for International Development, and Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) on Friday announced plans to increase public access to Federally funded research.
Nineteen Federal departments and agencies have made their scientific research publicly accessible by following the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy standards.
National Science and Technology Council’s Committee on Science established the Interagency Working Group on Open Science (IWGOS), which will coordinate with agencies on the preservation, discoverability, accessibility, and usability of Federally funded research. The group will also communicate with international agencies on open science.
The National Institutes of Health’s collection of more than 4 million life-science articles, PubMed Central is used by 1.25 million people per day. The Department of Agriculture published 95,000 articles on its PubAg and TreeSearch systems. The National Science Foundation provides access to 11,000 research articles through its Public Access Repository. The Defense Technical Information Center released 2,000 articles earlier this year from Department of Defense funded research.
Thirteen agencies now require research projects to have data management plans, outlining the data collected and how it will be kept overtime. Other agencies are also developing ways to improve data management, detection, and preservation.
The Department of Transportation has used the USDOT Research Hub to release more than 800 data sets. The Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Education have begun to receive data management plans for their research projects.
The U.S. Geological Survey, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration released tools to help with data management and categorization.
“These efforts to open up the results of Federally funded research promise to increase the return of Federal investments in scientific research, bolster the reliability of that research, accelerate scientific discovery, stimulate innovation, promote entrepreneurship, and enhance economic growth and job creation,” said Jerry Sheehan, assistant director for scientific data and information at the OSTP, in a blog post.
