OSTI, US Dept of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information | Speeding access to science information from DOE and Beyond

New OSTI Tool Facilitates Submission of Accepted Manuscripts

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Over the past year, the Department of Energy (DOE) has taken a series of historic steps to make scholarly scientific publications resulting from DOE research funding publicly accessible and searchable at no charge to readers. In July 2014, the DOE Public Access Plan was issued, and that August, the Department launched the DOE Public Access Gateway for Energy and Science^Beta (DOE PAGES^Beta). These milestones were in response to a February 2013 directive by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). When fully operational, DOE PAGES^Beta will offer free access to the best available full-text version of DOE-affiliated scholarly publications – either the accepted manuscript or the published article – after an administrative interval of 12 months. DOE PAGES^Beta was developed and is maintained for DOE by the Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI).

Under the DOE Public Access Plan, DOE-funded lab-affiliated authors are expected to submit metadata and links to accepted manuscripts in their lab repositories (or the full texts of the manuscripts themselves) to OSTI from October 1, 2014, onward. For DOE financial assistance recipients (grantees) at universities and other institutions, the public access requirement likewise applies to any award made or renewed after October 1, 2014. Leveraging the Department’s long-standing program for managing R&D results emanating from DOE labs, facilities, programs, and awards, the DOE Public Access Plan establishes a process under the DOE Scientific and Technical Information Program (STIP) whereby accepted manuscripts of peer-reviewed journal articles will be collected and submitted via the corporate DOE E-Link system for dissemination on DOE PAGES^Beta.

Submitting accepted manuscripts of peer-reviewed journal articles has become much easier with the help of a new tool that OSTI has developed. This new interactive form guides users through a simplified process; it provides hover-over instructions, allowing users to access help information without leaving a particular screen, or risking the loss of work. Uncertain of what a digital object identifier (DOI) is, or whether your version of an article is an accepted manuscript? Place your mouse pointer over the corresponding question marks to get immediate answers.

This smart form changes to accommodate different users. Selecting “Non-Grantee” prompts you to select your associated research organization or site to continue. “Grantees” move on to the next screen. On a subsequent screen, users have the option of adding a DOI; including a DOI reduces your time and effort, since it auto-populates a majority of the required metadata. A DOI often fills in the title, journal name, volume and issue, serial identifier, page range, publication date, authors, and sponsoring DOE program office, leaving only a few steps to completion. This form also accommodates Open Researcher and Contributor IDs (ORCID IDs), a type of unique identifier for authors assigned by ORCID, an international, interdisciplinary, nonprofit organization that provides a registry of persistent identifiers for authors. These identifiers support the disambiguation of scientific and academic authors, and help provide long-term access to their research. Other key pieces of metadata are added throughout the process, with required fields noted, and clear navigation is provided to next and previous sections.

DOE Policy for Digital Research Data Management Released

The Department of Energy recently released the DOE Policy for Digital Research Data Management, which requires that research activities sponsored by the Department have an associated Data Management Plan (DMP) that describes whether and how the digital research data generated by DOE-sponsored research will be shared and preserved. The policy FAQs encourage DOE researchers to use an OSTI resource to help increase access to their digital data.

The new DOE policy was developed in response to the February 2013 OSTP memorandum, “Increasing Access to the Results of Federally Funded Scientific Research,” which directed agencies that spend more than $100 million a year on research and development to develop plans for increasing public access to peer-reviewed scientific publications and digital data resulting from federally funded research investments. The DOE Public Access Plan that the Department subsequently issued in July 2014 detailed principles and requirements for the management of digital research data and provided that a data management policy to implement them would be forthcoming.

Under the new DOE Policy for Digital Research Data Management, beginning October 1, 2015, each DOE sponsoring research office must include the requirements for DMPs in all solicitations and invitations for research funding, with details about how and when a DMP should be submitted. Some DOE sponsoring research offices have already begun requiring DMPs as part of research proposals. For guidance and requirement information, refer to specific solicitations and the guidance provided by the DOE sponsoring office.

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In FAQs accompanying the policy, guidance on citing data products is offered to DOE researchers: “To facilitate the citation of data products, the DOE encourages the use of persistent identifiers such as Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs). DOIs facilitate the accurate linking between publications and data products. In most cases, the DOE can provide DOIs free of charge for datasets resulting from DOE-funded research through its Office of Scientific and Technical Information DOE Data ID Service.”

Through this service, OSTI assigns DOIs to datasets submitted by DOE and its contractor and grantee researchers and registers the DOIs with DataCite, an international organization that supports data visibility, to aid in citation, discovery, and retrieval. OSTI provides this free registration service to enhance DOE’s management of datasets.