Details

Published on Thursday, 25 August 2022 12:00

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) recently released a memorandum outlining guidance for federal departments and agencies to update their public access policies as soon as possible to make publications and research funded by taxpayers publicly accessible, without an embargo or cost. For more information and to read the press release, please visit https://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/news-updates/2022/08/25/ostp-issues-guidance-to-make-federally-funded-research-freely-available-without-delay/. 

The new guidance can be found at 

https://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/news-updates/2022/08/25/breakthroughs-for-alldelivering-equitable-access-to-americas-research/

According to Clifford Lynch of CNI, this guidance “updates the 2013 Holdren memo on open access. This new guidance extends the Holdren memo in a number of important ways. It applies to all agencies funding research, not just those with budgets over $100 Million. It eliminates the optional 12-month embargo period for publications. And it strengthens provisions for timely access to research data. There are many details in the new guidance that are worth studying; for example, it calls for the adoption of various persistent identifiers (PIDs). Note that, much like the Holdren memo, this will take several years to play out. Individual agencies have to formulate policies and implementation plans and schedules, and then implement them. The new memo contains timeline parameters for various aspects of the policy guidance.”