2022 OSTP Public Access Policy Memo

Welcome to UVA Library’s Guide about the 2022 OSTP Public Access Memo! This guide describes the recent OSTP Memo, how it will impact researchers at UVA, and how you can find help meeting the new requirements.

Questions?  Reach out to the Scholarly Communication Services team at lb-scholcomm@virginia.edu (for general questions) or Research Data Service at researchdataservices@virginia.edu (for Research Data questions). 

About the OSTP Public Access Memo

The OSTP Public Access Memo (also known as the Nelson Memo, but formally entitled Ensuring Free, Immediate, and Equitable Access to Federally Funded Research) was released in August 2022 by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) under the direction of Dr. Alondra Nelson. The memo guides all federal agencies to develop plans indicating how they will provide public access to the results of federally funded research. This memo is a successor to the 2013 OSTP memo Expanding Public Access to the Results of Federally Funded Research (also known as the Holdren Memo).

The 2022 Public Access Memo provides policy guidance to federal agencies on ensuring availability of federally funded research materials, including data and research results, to the public, free of charge and without an embargo period. The Nelson Memo applies to ALL federal agencies (regardless of research budget or field of study), it includes both peer reviewed publications and their underlying data, and the ultimate goal is to provide free, immediate access to research.

Key aspects of the new federal policy

• It covers all federal agencies and departments, an expansion from the 20 agencies covered under the 2013 policy.
• It calls for data underlying all published research conclusions to be made immediately available.
• It extends the previous policy’s original scope beyond research articles to include peer-reviewed book chapters, editorials, and conference proceedings.
• It calls for research publications to be machine-readable so they are more useful to researchers and the public through text and data mining, computational analysis, and other technologies, as well as through assistive technology.
• It calls for the use of persistent identifiers that make it easier to find and connect research outputs, increasing the discoverability and impact of research.

From: VIVA: https://vivalib.org/va/external/VRL/OSTP

Key Dates

• August 25, 2022 - The OSTP Public Access Memo is released.
• December 31, 2024 - The date by which agencies should publish their new or updated public access policies.
• December 31, 2025 - The date by which agencies' public access policies will be in effect.
• December 31, 2026 - The date for agencies to publish full implementation plans for public access policies regarding metadata collection and assignment of personal identifiers.
• December 31, 2027 - The date that all agency public access policies for metadata collection and assignment of PIDs must be in effect.

For more details see the Timeline section.

Top three impacts crucial for you to know: 

1. The policies will apply to both “scholarly publications” and the underlying “scientific data.” “Scholarly publications” for this purpose include works that have been peer-reviewed, such as journal articles or manuscripts, book chapters, and conference proceedings, published as a result of the funded research. “Scientific Data” refers to the underlying factual material that will allow others to replicate and validate research findings as reported in scholarly publications.
2. Federal funders will NOT require researchers to pay to publish their work openly in a journal - from the FAQs: "adherence to and implementation of the [memo] does not require expense on the part of the researcher. Impact on publishing costs is a possible, but not necessary outcome... the requirement can be achieved by use of agency-designated repositories with the final peer-reviewed manuscript." NIH's PubMed and the NSF/DOE PAR (Public Access Repository) are two examples of suitable repositories.
3. All federal agencies must complete and share their plans by December 31, 2024, and take effect no later than December 31, 2025. But note, some agencies might put the requirements in place before December 31, 2025. A list of Public Access Plans published by federal agencies is available on the Public Access Plans & Guidance webpage.

Adapted from https://lib.asu.edu/news/research/3-takeaways-2022-white-house-office-science-and-technology-policy