OSTI.gov Newsletter | OSTI, US Dept of Energy, Office of Scientific and Technical Information

"As part of its preparations for launching a public access portal to scholarly scientific publications resulting from Department of Energy (DOE) research funding, the DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) is collaborating with a subset of DOE national laboratories and authors on pilot projects designed to help OSTI and members of the DOE Scientific and Technical Information Program (STIP) learn more about what will be entailed in collecting accepted manuscripts from DOE-funded authors. OSTI is developing the DOE public access gateway in response to a February 22, 2013, memorandum, 'Increasing Access to the Results of Federally Funded Scientific Research,' issued by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). The OSTP memo called on federal science agencies that spend more than $100 million a year on research and development (R&D) to develop and implement public access plans for making accepted manuscripts and peer-reviewed scientific journal articles resulting from agency research investments publicly available in a timely fashion.  By statute, OSTI is the DOE office responsible for collecting, preserving, and disseminating scientific and technical information (STI) emanating from DOE R&D activities.  A DOE policy directive on 'Scientific and Technical Information Management' requires DOE offices, contractors, and grantees 'to ensure that STI is appropriately managed as part of the DOE mission to enable the advancement of scientific knowledge and technological innovation.' Now, OSTI and the DOE STIP are working together to develop and implement standard operating procedures for managing the intake of accepted manuscripts as a central element of DOE’s public access solution.  OSTI is conducting pilots with several DOE national laboratories to learn more about how authors interface with publishers’ article submission systems and when during those workflows accepted manuscripts are available.   The scholarly publications process varies widely from publisher to publisher, and the sophistication of the systems continues to evolve.  Through pilots involving DOE-funded authors at participating labs, OSTI and the DOE STIP expect to increase their knowledge of manuscript submission practices, and that promises to facilitate implementation of public access to scholarly publications across the Department ..."