Social Security Administration: Plan for Increasing Public Access to the Results of Federally Funded Scientific Research

"All scientific research publications and scientific research data resulting from our federally funded research will be our property with unlimited rights to reuse, reproduce, and make available at any physical, digital, or online location accessible to the public. We may require unlimited rights licenses to use, modify, reproduce, release, or disclose research data in whole or in part, in any manner, and for any purpose whatsoever, and may authorize others to do the same, depending on the facts and circumstances of the award. The requirements in this public access plan do not remove or change other requirements of Federal law, regulation, agency policy, or terms of existing contracts and agreements....

Scientific research publications resulting from federally funded research, including final scientific research reports due to us under a contract, grant, or other agreement, will be publicly accessible for free at the time of publication or as close to publication as feasible. Researchers must ensure that the final publication is permitted to be available in an SSA-designated repository. Researchers who apply to conduct federally funded scientific research may include reasonable publication costs and costs associated with public access as allowable expenses in their proposed research budgets. We will retain the right to use additional means to provide for storage and public access to publications. We will retain the right to provide the public with any information necessary to access the publication, including URL web addresses and persistent identifiers, and we may provide that information to the public on our agency web site, in publications, notices, or any other means of communication we choose...."