On February 22, 2013, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) directed federal agencies that conduct research to develop plans ensuring peer-reviewed publications in scientific journals and related digital scientific research data resulting from federally-funded scientific research are accessible to the public. In response, our Plan to Increase Access to Results of EPA-Funded Scientific Research describes the steps EPA will take to meet those directives. The Plan was finalized on December 5, 2016. Now that the plan has been completed, we will be working towards implementing it in phases.
- Phase 1 – ORD intramural research publications and related research data effective January 1, 2016.
- Phase 2 – Non-ORD intramural research publications effective during 2017. Non-ORD intramural research data effective during 2018.
- Phase 3 – All EPA extramural research publications and related data effective with funding agreements completed during 2018.
(Note that the URL in the first line is to EPA's Open Goverment page and the quoted text comes from a text box on that page. I couldn't find a static URL to quote from.)
I think this is great news, especially for replication--it should be a lot easier for researchers to get the data sets necessary for publication. The ability for more people to read publications funded by taxpayer dollars also seems like a really good thing.
The links I had to the original memo and a page with links to the plans from other agencies no longer work (as of today, it appears, I can't imagine why). But for now that information is available at https://www.cendi.gov/projects/Public_Access_Plans_US_Fed_Agencies.html.
p.s. I could have sworn that either Tim or I posted on this, but I can't find it.
This work is not a product of the United States Government or the United States Environmental Protection Agency, and the author is not doing this work in any governmental capacity. The views expressed are those of the author only and do not necessarily represent those of the United States or the US EPA.
