U.S. Department of Energy
Date of this Version
7-24-2014
Abstract
Background
This document, the Public Access Plan (the Plan) for the Department of Energy (DOE or Department), including the National Nuclear Security Administration, presents the Department of Energy’s plan for increasing access to the results of the research it supports in response to the February 22, 2013, Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) Memorandum, “Increasing Access to the Results of Federally Funded Scientific Research.”1 This Plan outlines the Department’s approach to implementing the objectives of the OSTP memorandum. Through policies and systems discussed in this Plan, scholarly publications and datasets resulting from research directly arising from DOE funding can become more readily accessible to the public, setting the stage for increased innovation, commercial opportunities, and accelerated scientific breakthroughs.
With regard to unclassified and otherwise unrestricted2 research in scientific publications, the Department proposes a new policy and tool for providing access to peer-reviewed scholarly publications and associated metadata in which publishers retain their rights under copyright to the Version of Record (VoR). Both the policy and tool will be applied to scholarly publications resulting from unclassified and otherwise unrestricted research supported by the Department.
With regard to unclassified and otherwise unrestricted scientific data in digital formats, the Department proposes a set of principles and requirements to be adopted by all DOE offices supporting open research. Implementing strategies and timelines may differ across the Department depending on the specific communities supported and funding mechanisms used by each office.