“Ensuring Free, Immediate, and Equitable Access to Federally Funded Research”
In August 2022, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) issued a memorandum directed at all federal funding agencies titled Ensuring Free, Immediate, and Equitable Access to Federally Funded Research (often referred to as the Nelson Memo). This guidance states that all federal funding agencies are required to facilitate public access to the results of federally funded research.
The Nelson Memo eliminates the optional embargo period that allowed journals and publishers to halt access to full-text journal manuscripts in federal repositories for up to 12-months past their official publication dates.
Previously, the Holdren Memo only applied to federal agencies with Research & Development (R&D) budgets of $100 million or more. The Nelson memo affects all federal grantmaking agencies.
The data underlying scientific publications should be publicly accessible on the date of publication unless there are legal, privacy, ethical, or security concerns.
Expands the scope of scientific data that should be publicly accessible from the data underlying scientific publications to include “other federally funded scientific data that are not associated with peer-reviewed scholarly publications.” Agencies are encouraged to develop ways to make this accessibility happen.
Federal agencies with over $100 million in R&D expenditures should develop new or update existing public access plans by February 21, 2023. Agencies with $100 million or less in R&D expenditures should update or develop new plans by August 20, 2023. Publication of implementation plans should happen no later than December 31, 2024, with an effective date no later than one year after the publication of the agency plan.
(https://pas.wisc.edu/ostp-issues-new-public-access-guidance-to-federal-agencies/)
Expanding Public Access to the Results of Federally Funded Research
On February 22nd 2013 the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) director released the following memo:
"The OSTP hereby directs each Federal agency with over $100 million in annual conduct of research and development expenditures to develop a plan to support increased public access to the results of research funded by the Federal Government.This includes any results published in peer-reviewed scholarly publications that are based on research that directly arises from Federal funds, as defined in relevant OMB circulars (e.g., A-21and A-11)". OSTP Memo
Note: Includes both publications and data generated by grant money from these institutions. Failing to comply to the Public Access Policy of a federal agency has severe consequences which are detailed in each policy. Authors are responsible for ensuring they read and understand the entire policy prior andto grant submissions.
