On August 25, 2022, the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy (OSTP) issued a memorandum on Ensuring Free, Immediate, and Equitable Access to Federally Funded Research that will make taxpayer-funded research immediately available for the public to freely access and fully use. The new guidance unlocks more than $90 billion in research that the U.S. government funds each year by calling on all federal agencies to generate policies that eliminate the current 12-month waiting period for access to the outputs of federally funded research, including articles and data.
In light of this guidance, federal grant agencies have worked with OSTP to update their public access and data sharing plans; for a final deadline of December 31, 2025. Consequently, most grant agencies require a data management plan that describes how research data will be preserved and published. For assistance in drafting data management plans or help finding information on grant agency requirements please contact the Digital Initiatives Librarian.
As federal agencies rapidly update their public access plans to meet Nelson Memo requirements, it can be challenging to keep up with the requirements of any given funding agency. The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (primarily known as SPARC) maintains community resources for tracking, comparing, and understanding both current and future U.S. federal funder requirements for sharing research publications and research data. Both sites allows you to select up to three federal agencies to compare their policies side by side for either publications or data.