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2022 OSTP Public Access Policy Memo

This guide will assist users in understanding the 2022 OSTP Public Access Memo (the "Nelson" memo)

What Resources are there for University of Virginia Researchers Related to the OSTP Memo?

Because each affected federal agency will have the opportunity to set its own policies, and because no two fields are exactly the same, it’s challenging to give guidance at this point in time that is sure to be useful once new policies have been implemented. Therefore, this page will be updated as we learn more from the agencies.

That said, the timeline for these changes allows for UVA researchers to explore the options that the university provides to support their publication and data management. Some options for researchers include the following:

  1. At the start of any research project, we encourage you to reach out to data management consultants in the libraries to as you develop a Data Management Plan.
    1. For researchers in the Health System (SOM, SON, etc.), please contact Research and Data Services (at hsl-rdas@virginia.edu) in the Health Sciences Library.
    2. For researchers on the academic side, please contact the Research Data Management Team (at dmconsult@virginia.edu), located in Research Data Services in the University Library.
    3. For all NIH Data Management and Sharing Plans (the NIH DMSP) please visit the Health Science Library's dedicated page for help for NIH DMSPs.
  2. Deposit a version of a research work into UVA's institutional repository, LibraOpen, thereby creating a public access copy of work that might otherwise be behind a paywall. OSTP has emphasized that this should be a peer-reviewed version or final manuscript of a research work (journal article, book chapter, editorials, conference proceedings). Authors should review their author agreements and reach out to the Library's Scholarly Communication Services team with any questions.
  3. Deposit the data which support the publication in an appropriate data repository. Funders have designated certain repositories as appropriate for meeting this requirement. For instance, NIH lists these repositories: a non-exhaustive list of NIH-Support Scientific Data Repositories. You can also deposit data in UVA's institutional data repository, LibraData, when appropriate. Please reach out to the Library's Research Data Management team with any questions about data repositories.
  4. Although researchers can comply with funder public access policies by depositing a peer-reviewed manuscript version of a published article in a designated repository, some may wish to publish open access. This may involve the author paying the publisher an Article Processing Charge (APC) which they can use grant funds to cover. However, the UVA Library has negotiated a number of “read and publish” agreements with publishers that either reduce or waive open access article processing charges for articles with corresponding authors from UVA. See this page for a full list of publishers: https://library.virginia.edu/teaching-and-writing/write

Adapted from: https://blogs.cul.columbia.edu/the-tinker/2023/01/25/the-nelson-memo-preparing-for-updated-federal-public-access-policies/