Federal Public Access Policies

The NSF policy for Public Access was released March 18, 2015. 

It defines what output from a study needs to be made available (article and data), what data is and exclusion criteria and provides guidance as to how to comply with the requirements of the plan.  Researchers applying for NSF funding are now required to submit a 2 page data management plan defining types of data produced by the research, how these data will managed through the research process and how and what data will be shared and archived at the end of the study.

When does the data and article need to be shared?

A timeline for sharing the data and articles should be laid out in the data management plan including need to embargo data and when data will be released from embargo. 

How will the data and article be shared?

Articles should be submitted to the new NSF repository for articles known as NSF-PAR -  http://par.nsf.gov/ within a year of publication. 

The requirements for data sharing are being explored.  Currently the NSF refers to the DMP and to the research community for discipline specific guidance.   Data can be shared through various repositories (such as institutional or discipline repositories) and the NSF is working on how to support data discoverability.