Developing a Public Access Plan | National Endowment for the Humanities

"NEH’s Public Access Plan is in part a response to a 2022 memo sent by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to all federal agencies. Then-acting OSTP director and social scientist Alondra Nelson called on all federal grant makers to establish plans that “ensure free, immediate, and equitable access to federally funded research.” The Public Access Plan will bring NEH in line with other research funding agencies such as the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health, which have required public access for over a decade.

Throughout 2024, NEH has been conducting outreach to stakeholders such as the Modern Language Association, Association of University Presses, the Association of Research Libraries, and other organizations to listen to feedback and respond to questions. These conversations will inform the final plan....

The draft plan specifies:

• NEH awardees must submit a copy of any peer-reviewed journal article manuscript resulting from award activities no later than the article publication date. NEH will deposit each article in a “designated repository” where it will be available to the public at no charge.
• When an NEH applicant intends to create a dataset resulting from applied research, they must describe in their proposal how they will preserve that data and make it available to the public. If funding is approved, the awardee will be required to implement these activities. We anticipate the plan requirements will apply to only a small number of NEH-funded datasets. The plan will adhere to both the FAIR Principles and the CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance, which emphasize that some data may not be appropriate to share widely...."